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A. D. 1850— 1866. 



Forest Lawn: 

36/ 

ITS 

History, Dedications, Progress 



REGULATIONS, 



NAMES OF LOT HOLDERS, &c. 



BUFFALO: 

THOMAS, HOWARD & JOHNSON. 

Franklin Printing House. 

I867. 



■ Ss575 



-5 

6 



INTRODUCTORY. 



The Trustees of the "Buffalo City Cemetery," submit to « 
their fellow citizens a statement of the result of their labors in 
organizing the Association, securing the lands and preparing for 
occupation the grounds they have acquired. 

The organization was effected in November, 1864, and the 
lands acquired embrace the old " Forest Lawn Cemetery," with 
lands adjoining, and containing in all more than 215 acres. 

In effecting this object, the constant and close attention of 
the Trustees has been required, and has been given, and they 
have the satisfaction of knowing that their labors have been 
fairly appreciated by the mass of our citizens, for whose com- 
mon benefit these efforts have been put forth. Heavy respon- 
sibilities were incurred by the Board, with an abiding confidence 
that the public would truly estimate their efforts, and sustain 
them in carrying forward the work to ultimate success. In this 
expectation the Trustees are happy to say that they have not 
been disappointed. Our citizens have responded to the calls of 
the Trustees, in a manner which has enabled them to meet thus 
far their obligations, lay out, improve and embellish the grounds 
in a manner which command general approval, and assures the 
success of the Association. 

The grounds will still retain the name of " Forest Lawn," 
and with the encouragement and approbation already manifested 
by our citizens, will stimulate the Trustees to renewed efforts to 



IV INTRODUCTORY. 

make it a burial place, in every respect adapted to the purpose, 
attractive in its surroundings, and such a resting place for the 
dead as will be creditable to the taste and Christian cultivation 
of our city. 

The principle upon which the Association is based commends 
itself to all. No private interest can be subserved, or special 
privileges allowed in its management. The property is the 
common property of owners of lots, and the net income or 
profits from any source, must be applied to the improvement of 
the grounds and for the common benefit of all. 

In the following pages the Trustees have endeavored to give 
to all interested, full information in regard to the spirit, scope 
and intention of the organization, and the general principles 
which will control its management; the proceedings at the 
dedication of the grounds in September last ; a full history of 
previous efforts of the kind, and a full report of the imposing 
and deeply impressive exercises upon that occasion. 



To give the public full information in regard to the first 
inception, progress, and history of these grounds, the Trustees 
combine in this volume a republication of the account of the 
Cemetery, made in the year 1856, which was prepared under the 
auspices of its first Board of Trustees. 



OFFICERS 



OF THE 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 

1867. 



EVERARD PALMER, President. 
OLIVER G. STEELE, Vice President. 
WM. KETCHUM, Secretary. 
DE WITT C. WEED, Treasurer. 
FRANCIS F. CURRY, Surveyor. 



Trustees. 



first class. 

Everard Palmer, Orsamus H. Marshall, 

Dexter P. Rumsey, Lewis F. Allen. 

second class. 
Francis H. Root, Henry Martin, 

Sidney Shepard, George Howard. 

third class. 
De Witt C. Weed, George Truscott, 

Oliver G. Steele, Russell H. Heywood. 



<gint S mi ^ m - 



THE FIRST 



Forest Lawn Cemetery. 



The grounds in this Cemetery embrace about 
eighty acres. They were purchased in 1849, by 
Mr. Charles E. Clarke, of the Rev. James N. 
Granger, and his brother, Mr. Warren Granger. 
The price paid was $150 per acre. They com- 
prise a part of the " Granger Farm," are located 
on the north-east side of Kenjocketa Creek, 
between Delaware and Main streets, and are 
about two miles and a half from the center of 
the city of Buffalo, although they are within 
its limits, as recently enlarged. 

The grounds form a bluff, or high table, and 
are nearly surrounded on the south and west by 
Kenjocketa Creek. They contain about equal 
quantities of forest and lawn : hence their name, 
" Forest Lawn." They are beautifully variegated ; 
a series of knolls extending from the south-east- 
erly bounds, nearly parallel with the creek, to the 



IO THE FIRST 

north-westerly corner of the grounds. Between 
this and the creek is a margin of the most beau- 
tiful woodland, varying in width from five or six 
to fifteen rods. The underbrush and surplus trees 
have been cleared out, and the grounds seeded 
with white clover. They now present a beautiful 
wood lawn, and afford a grateful shade for 
visitors in warm weather. 

The improvements upon these grounds were 
commenced early in the spring of 1850, and have 
been prosecuted without any interruption since 
that period. They are inclosed with a good 
substantial picket fence, eight feet in height. 

Avenues have been opened through almost 
every part of them. About thirty acres have 
been graded, laid out into lots, and improved in 
the most tasteful and appropriate manner for 
purposes of sepulture. Large and convenient 
buildings have been erected at the entrance of 
the main avenue leading to the grounds, for the 
residence of the Superintendent, and for the 
accommodation of the laborers upon the grounds ; 
also, a large Mausoleum, or receiving vault, 
capable of containing about sixty coffins, and a 
neat Gothic Cottage upon the grounds, for an 
office, and for the use of the sextons and persons 
who go to bury their dead in stormy or inclement 
weather. 

About five hundred Lots have already been 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. I I 

sold, and many of them improved in a manner 
highly creditable to the taste and liberality of the 
Proprietors. 

The grounds were dedicated to the burial of 
the dead, August 18, 1850, by interesting and 
appropriate religious exercises, commencing with 
the singing of the following Poem, written by 
Miss Matilda H. Stuart, of this city. 

Come to this dwelling of the dead, 

Thou wand'rer of a day ! 
Kneel at the threshold of thy home, 

And bid thy spirit pray. 
Come, while around thee thou canst fold 

The fading robes of life, 
And find a place to lay them by — 

When worn with dust and strife. 

Come from the busy, changeful world, 

And leave thy sorrows there, 
'T is meet that thou should'st steal awhile 

From turmoil and from care. 
The tender voice of mother earth, 

Her child will welcome here, 
She hath a lesson for thy heart, 

And music for thy ear. 

These forest trees, whose boughs go forth 

To meet their native sky, 
Will lead thy wayward thoughts afar — 

To fairer scenes on high. 
The flowers that blossom at their feet, 

And wither in their bloom, 
. Will teach the story thou may'st tell, 

While treading to the tomb. 



12 THE FIRST 

The stream that softly wanders through 

This place of holy rest, 
And holds a gentle freight of leaves 

Upon its placid breast, 
May whisper of the stream that flows, 

Far in the purer clime, 
And bears upon its healing waves, 

The weary sons of time. 

And here, amid these solemn shades, 

The moss and ivy creep, 
And mark the spot where, all unwept, 

Thy Indian brothers sleep, 
And thou wilt feel that all are dust, 

And all must pass away ; 
One Father loves and watches too, 

The children of the clay. 

Then followed reading of Scripture, by the 
Rev. G. W. Hosmer, D. D., and a prayer by the 
Rev. Dr. Shelton. 

The Choir then sung the following Poem, by 
Mr. Asher P. Nichols : 

When Angels, at Bethesda's pool, 
Troubled, each clay, the waters cool, 

All maladies were healed ; 
To impotence, came strength enhanced — 
The halt leaped forth — sweet visions glanced 

On orbs in darkness sealed. 

Oh Death ! Bcthesda, where the clay, 

And cares of earth are washed away, 

The fettered soul set free ; — 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 1 3 

Set free, to mount and soar, and sing 
In rapture, on the buoyant wing 
Of immortality — 

Thy Treasure-House but holds the dust 
Of those we loved, in sacred trust, 

The spirit rests not here. 
Thou shalt not keep them ! Glorified, 
These forms shall rise, and side by side, 

Shall fill a holier sphere. 

Here morn's fresh breath and golden beams, 
And evening's hush, and murm'ring streams, 

Their loving watch shall keep ; 
And Angels, passing to and fro, 
Shall pause, and bless this earth below — 

The dust of those who sleep. 

Then let us, Death ! upon thy bowers, 
Strew fairest, forest leaves and flowers, 

That kindly hands may cull ; 
Bid shapes of dread all flee away — 
To life, oh Grave ! thou art the Way, 

The Gate, called Beautiful ! 

Mr. Guy H. Salisbury then read the following 
Ode, written by him for the occasion : 

We consecrate to Death 
This Forest-Altar — hence to be 
The place of Graves. We yield to thee, 
Oh Shadowy Power ! this fair domain ; 
We give thee Wood, and Hill, and Plain, 
To gather here thy pale array, 
The Vanquished of Life's battle-day ! 



1 4 THE FIRST 

No more the golden grain 
Above these fields shall broadly wave, 
But greenly o'er the grassy grave, 
The mantling turf shall wrap the deep 

Undreaming sleep 
Of thousands, who from Life's unrest, 
Shall seek Earth's sheltering breast — 

A refuge blest ! 

Yet not, oh, Death ! to thee, 
As the Grim Monster, and Chimera dread, 
Of horrid shape, give we our dead — 
Give we this consecrated ground, 
With Nature's garlands crowned — 
Not as the Fleshless Skeleton 
All shuddering look upon, 
With fearful scythe, and glass of doom — 
The Spectral Terror of the Tomb ! 

Rather, oh, Death ! art thou 
The Weeping Angel, with sad brow, 
And drooping torch — whose tearful eye 
Is filled with kindly sympathy 
For human woe — whose dark, soft wing 
O'er Life's last hour is hovering, 
In pity sent to break the chain 
That binds the sufferer unto pain ! 

Death ! Sleep ! of Mercy born — 
Ye minister alike to all — 
In Peasant's cot and Monarch's hall, 
Ye softly seal the weeping eye, 
Ye hush pale Sorrow's anguished sigh, 
Ye soothe the wildly-throbbing brain, 
Ye dull the quick, sharp sting of pain, 
Ye " Knit the ravelled sleeve of care," 
Ye solace even dark Despair! 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 1 5 

Twin brothers ye ! though mortal eye 
But sees Life's mightiest enemy 
In Death, the Weeper ! — yet is given 
Through him alone, the hope of Heaven ! 

Thou dark-winged Angel ! unto thee 
We yield this Woodland shrine — 

Sacred to thee and thine ! 
Here shalt thou, from the World apart, 
Gently lay the care-crushed heart — 
Aching breast that heaves no more, 
Life's wild, "fitful fever" o'er, — 
Guileless Infant, blest of God, 
Pillowed 'neath the flowery sod — 
Beauty's radiant, sylph-like form, 
Late with thrilling passions warm — 
Manhood's port of dauntless pride, 
And withered age — here, side by side, 
To rest within their narrow bed 
Till trembling Earth gives up its dead ! 

Hither, " Heavy-laden ! " come — 
To the weary wanderer's home ! 
As flies the arrow-stricken deer 
To thickest shades, so mayst thou here 
Find welcome rest : the ceaseless roar 
Of warring crowds, shall vex no more 

Thy tortured ear : — Ye crave, 

E'en from the pitying Grave, 
That sweet Forgetfulness that brings 

Peace on its healing wings ! 

Mourner ! bowed with woe, 
That passeth tears and outward show, 
Frequent to this calm retreat, 
Wilt thou turn thy pilgrim feet, 



1 6 THE FIRST 

With nature's self that grief to share, 
The lonely heart doth deepest bear : 
Love, as strong as Death, shall keep 
Vigils where the lovely sleep — 
Hope doth watch above the tomb, 
Broken Hearted ! hither come ! 

Worldling ! 'mid thy giddy round, 
From all that tempts, corrupts thee there — 
Ambition's lures, false Fashion's glare, 
From lust of Wealth, and schemes of Pride, 
One brief hour turn aside — 
And, hearts subdued, with thoughtful eye, 
Here learn how soon Life's vanity 
Shall cease its mockings — teach thy soul 
To win a worthier goal — 
" And on Death's solemn Threshold see 
Glimpses of Immortality ! 

Peace to this Place of Rest ! 
'T is common earth no longer now, 
The gleaning sickle, and the laboring plow 
Here cease their toil — for holy grounds 
Are Gardens of the Grave — the bounds 
'Twixt Life and Death — the awful " bourne 
From whence no traveler doth return," 
Is peopled with dim mysteries — 
The Spirit-Realm around us lies ! 
Peace to these Shades ! these hills and Dells, 
Where silence, like a Presence, dwells ! 

Rest to the Sleeping Dead ! 

The billows of the stormy World 

Urge their frail barques no more 
To bleak Oblivion's shore, 

Where Empire's shattered wrecks are hurled- 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. I 7 

They tranquil lie, moored in strange rest, 
Upon the Dead Sea's waveless breast. 
Worn voyagers ! burdened with life's woes, 
Battling long with countless foes, 
Seek ye, at the conflict's close, 
Repose — Repose ! 

The Hon. G. W. Clinton delivered the follow- 
ing Address : 

The formal dedication of our new Cemetery, 
my friends, may well inspire mingled emotions 
of mournful solemnity and chastened joy. It is 
an occasion favoring individual meditation, and 
religious musing, rather than promising profit 
from a lay discourse. I feel that this beauteous 
scene is hallowed. It is already consecrated by 
two graves, marking the indiscriminate destruc- 
tiveness of insatiate Death. Here, " after life's 
fitful fever," a man reposes from the vicissitudes 
of a long and troubled being, and "sleeps well" — 
and here, too, a tender child — an opening bud, 
which was withered, and exhaled its perfume 
untimeously to heaven- — is passing into dust : 
and the wide interval between these, its first 
tenants, will soon be filled, and this City of the 
Dead grow populous from the ranks of those 
who toil, enjoy, and suffer in the neighbor City 
of the Living. Truly this is holy ground, and it 
becomes us reverently to put off our shoes as we 



I 8 THE FIRST 

approach it, and to stand upon it in all humility 
as we devote it to the dead forever. 

In the judgment of unfeeling reason, it may 
be indifferent what treatment the living render 
unto the dead. 

" Can storied urn and animated bust 

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath ? 
Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust, 

Or flattery soothe the dull, cold ear of death ?" 

True, indeed, it is, that it matters nothing to 
the insensate body, bereft of spirit, whether it is 
mourned over and bewailed, and then reluctantly 
committed with sad funeral rites to the bosom 
of the earth, or thrown carelessly aside to be 
devoured by dogs, or thrust upon a dung-hill. 
It may be true, that the immortal spirit can feel 
no sympathy with its deserted tabernacle — that 
the soul feels not any insult or indignity the 
corpse may suffer, and is touched not by any 
honors that are paid to it. But, thank God ! 
men are in these, as in all high and holy things, 
governed by a loftier reason than that which 
rests in mere material knowledge or in Logic — 
by that instinctive reason, incorporate with our 
being, which we call sentiment — which subserves 
higher interests, and leads to purer joys than any 
the mere utilitarian consults, or aims at, in his 
barren speculations. Grant that the mournful 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 1 9 

tribute we pay to the corpse of one who has left 
us sorrowing is naught to it, and that the 
enfranchised soul as it soars upward into im- 
mensity of being, casts not a look behind ; yet 
the paying of that tribute abates the edge of 
anguish, strengthens us for life's battle, encour- 
ages us to heavenly contemplation, and tends to 
prepare us to submit with hopeful resignation 
unto death. What, we ask with awe, is the 
adoration we poor worms pay to our Maker, to 
Him ! How can the withholding of it detract 
from His infinity! But, were we to deny that 
worship, how infinite our loss ! It is good to 
mourn — and mourning and reverence for the 
dead, commanded by nature, are instruments 
of blessing to the living. The soul, as it wings 
its w 7 ay from earth, like Elijah when he went 
up by a whirlwind into heaven, drops a mantle, 
with which, if we will but use it rightly, we may 
smite the Jordan, and divide its waters and go 
safely over, 

• " Through the dear might of Him who walked the waves." 

Death is a mystery that six thousand years 
have shed no light on. Faith may blunt its 
sting, but can not divest it of its awfulness. 
When it first invades a family, and strikes down 
a victim, the bereaved hang over the body, with 
the same astonishment and anguish that agitated 



20 THE FIRST 

our first parents, when they drooped over mur- 
dered Abel. Divine religion is not stoical. It is 
best felt when it encourages us to weep, and 
sheds its balm upon our wounded souls, and 
teaches us to mourn as those should mourn who 
have hope beyond the grave. That philosophy 
which would lead us to regard the dead as alien 
to us, and to treat them as mere clods of the 
valley, is as false and powerless as that which 
would repress the young mother's tears, as she 
bends over her first-born, but yesterday so full of 
life, and now, " so coldly sweet, so deadly fair." 
Such stoicism is not merely irreligious — it is 
brutal and inhuman — it is worse than brutal, for 
even dumb animals mourn for their young, and 
linger around their bodies. It is impossible ; or 
consists only with devilish despair, or mere bar- 
barity. The tiger eschews it; the cold-blooded 
snake is too warm to exemplify it; and it can 
reign only in such living things as have no heart, 
and no sensorium. In all time, in every corner 
of the world, the great truth has been mani- 
fest, that "man was made to mourn." The most 
ancient of human records concur with all his- 
tory, to corroborate our own experience of this 
truth. And yet it is but a necessary corollary 
from the prior truth that man was made to love. 
Human love — the love of kindred, of friendship, 
of the sexes — reigns everywhere, and everywhere 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 21 

Death enters, and scarce one of his fell darts has 
ever failed to bring woe to others than its imme- 
diate victims. The voice of lamentation for the 
dead has been perpetually ascending from the 
earth since the destroyer gained admission to it 
through sin, and it will continue to ascend forever 
until Death himself is slain by the Redeemer. 

Man is " half dust, half deity," and the body 
is the temple of the soul. Apart from love, this 
temple, when deserted by its divinity, has always 
been regarded with a religious feeling, except, 
perchance, here and there, in the darkest corners 
of the earth, by a few tribes, who were so 
degraded as to make civilized men question their 
humanity, or to serve as the semblance of an 
argument for that atheistical skepticism, which 
contended that our race is but a material im- 
provement upon, or higher condition of the brute, 
and altogether earthy — that the organization of 
the Caucasian is but a little superior to that of 
the African — " God's image cut in ebony " — the 
African's but a remove above that of the Booth- 
ian, and so would trace us, by regular downward 
steps, through the Terra del Fuegians, the 
Shoshonic digger, and the Australasian, to the 
great Ape, or the Man of the Woods, and prove 
us to be merely a more cunning composition of 
dust, elaborated by a something it calls Chance, 
or Nature. How strange — that man can so 



22 THE FIRST 

delude himself as to claim honor from mortality, 
for proving it a thing of ashes, and not a 
phoenix! or to imagine that, with all the proofs 
we have of immortality, and all the wonders of 
creation and sublimities of revelation spread 
before us, the Christian's Deity can be dethroned 
by the attribution of his mighty works to Chance 
or Nature! — as though Chance, or Nature, could 
mould, and animate, and sustain the world, and 
govern it as it has been and is governed, and not 
corroborate the revelation deigned to us, and be, 
in all essential attributes, a God — the God of 
Abraham, the God of Israel, our God ! 

But, to return. With the few barbarous 
exceptions I have indicated, the corpse of man 
has always been regarded as sacred, and the 
living have put it out of sight with sad solemni- 
ties, and funeral celebrations, varying ever with 
the climate, with local circumstances, and with 
religious tenets. Even in the rare cases where 
apparent indignity awaited upon death, there 
was, perchance, some superstitious reason which 
purged offense and made it consistent with love 
and veneration for the departed. Fire was the 
Persian's God, or emblem of divinity ; and he 
feared to pollute it by the burning of the dead, so 
common in all but the very earliest ages, and so 
prevalent in neighboring countries ! But we 
would greatly err, if we attributed to him irrev- 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 2T, 

erence, in placing corpses in buildings open at 
the top, to the end that the birds might aid 
corruption. He had for this some warrant in 
his creed ; and even murder and cannibalism, 
extended by the Terra del Fuegian to friends 
and kindred, when old age withers and famine 
gnaws them, may be so founded. The poor 
Indian, who exposes the dead warrior in a canoe 
upon some hill-top by the Columbia, pleads 
affection and religion ; for he believes that the 
dead will wake to life again and wishes him, at 
the instant of his rising, to see the salmon crowd- 
ing the waters of the renovated river. In short, 
the doctrine of man's immortality, once universal, 
has been utterly lost by few, if any, of the 
offshoots of the great human family, however 
benighted ; and, wherever the least trace of it 
exists, no matter how deformed it may be by 
superstition and priestly folly, it combines with 
natural instinct to enforce respectful treatment of 
the dead. Brutes, perforce, leave their dead to 
be preyed upon by carrion birds, and beasts, and 
insects, and to rot just as they fall ; but man 
everywhere throughout the world, — if to bury 
be, as lexicographers assert, " to put into a place 
of protection, safety, or defense " — so far bury 
theirs as to shield them from everything by them 
regarded as peril, or as insult. 

In ancient times, and apparently among all 



24 THE FIRST 

nations, this religious feeling was so strong, that 
to be deprived of burial, or the funeral rites, was 
regarded as a great calamity, or as a punishment 
due only to atrocious malefactors. The entrance 
to Elysium was closed against the unburied 
Greek and Roman, and their ghastly shades were 
compelled to wander and suffer for a century by 
the sullen Styx. Where Christianity has not 
mitigated the ferocity of human nature, hatred 
has pursued its victims beyond death, and found 
pleasure in mangling and insulting their remains. 
Homer's Achilles was intended as the portrait of 
a hero ; and yet Achilles is represented as drag- 
ging, by the heels, dead Hector, around the walls 
of Troy, and as yielding the corpse for burial, 
only upon entreaty, such as might have drawn 
" iron tears down Plato's cheek." Even in 
Jewish history there are, in this particular, sad 
proofs of the malignity of the human heart. 
Even now, in some countries called Christian, 
criminals, after suffering the extreme penalty of 
the law, arc gibbeted in irons, or mangled and 
exposed to moulder in the public gaze. We 
need not go far back in history to find men called 
Christians, in the name of Christ, wreaking a 
posthumous vengeance. Surely men, when 
they forget charity, may become demons ! Per- 
haps, in the insanity of intolerance, burning was 
resorted to as a punishment of heretics, not 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 25 

merely beeause it inflicted the most exquisite 
and prolonged tortures, and was an apt type of 
the eternal flames, but because it more completely 
dispersed the body, and enabled the executioner 
to trample upon its ashes. According to Fuller, 
" The corpse of John Wickliffe had quietly slept 
in his grave about forty-one years after his death, 
till his body was reduced to bones, and his bones 
almost to dust," when the council of Constance, 
" cursed his memory and ordered that his bones 
be taken out of the ground, and thrown far off 
from any Christian burial." " They come, sum- 
mer, commissary, official, chancellor, proctors, 
doctors, and their servants, (so that the remnant 
of the body would not hold out a bone among so 
many hands,) take what was left out of the grave, 
and burn them to ashes, and cast them into 
Swift, a neighboring brook running hard by." 
" Thus " adds the exulting history, " this brook 
has conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into 
Severn, Severn into the narrow seas, then into 
the main ocean, and thus the ashes of Wickliffe 
are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is 
dispersed all the world over." I fear me to 
inquire whether Protestantism, in the fierce con- 
tentions of the Reformation, assumed not also, 
at times, a persecuting spirit — whether it did not 
sometimes bear the sword, and light the fagot — 

whether its professors were altogether guiltless 

4 



26 THE FIRST 

of such horrible atrocities committed upon the 
living, and of such sacrilegious crimes against 
the dead. Cromwell was exhumed, and hatred, 
that was overborne in life, spent itself idly upon 
his bones. These shocking excesses of fanati- 
cism, whether religious or political, may have 
been the result of policy, rather than the fruits 
of vengeance ; but either position places in the 
clearest light the fact, that, in the judgment of 
those times, as in our own — in the hearts of the 
men of those days, as in our hearts — a tranquil 
grave was precious. 

Meaner motives than love and pity have some- 
times contributed to this universal disposition to 
honor and protect the dead. The remnants of 
humanity might be put to fatal and unholy uses. 
The witch and sorcerer were supposed to draw 
from them most potent materials for spells and 
incantations, by which they controlled the course 
of nature, caused individuals to pine and waste 
away, and played their cantraps and did the 
pettiest mischief. Then again, perturbed spirits 
had power, and roamed abroad at night, to 
punish those who had wronged them „ living ; 
they guarded their own tombs, and avenged with 
supernatural visitations, the violated quiet of 
their graves. 

But away with all such superstitions ! It is 
enough for us to know that human love extends 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 27 

beyond the grave, and concurs with natural piety 
to demand respectful treatment of the dead ; — 
that it requires that the corpse, so lately animated 
by that which bore the likeness of divinity, 
should be committed to the tomb, before " De- 
cay's effacing fingers " have swept away the last 
lingering traces of nobility — that the grave 
should be kept inviolate, at least until corruption 
has done its perfect work, and dust is rendered 
undistinguishably to dust. Corruption must 
come. It is not desirable, if it were possible, to 
avert it ; but it should ravage in darkness and 
concealment, so that man may not become in 
death an object of disgust to, or offend the 
senses of his fellow-men, — so that our last recol- 
lections of the dead may be pleasurably solemn, 
and have no touch of horror. 

The doom of the body, " Dust thou art, and 
unto dust shalt thou return," is just. Every 
portion of it is drawn from material nature, and 
it is ever changing. We are constantly laying 
aside old, and drawing new matter into our 
frames, so that a man wears many bodies in life, 
and lays down the last one only in the grave. 
God gives the body as a tabernacle for the spirit, 
and when He recalls that spirit, nature, that 
power which draws all things to herself, will 
resume, through corruption,- the else useless 
atoms, and take them into her vast laboratory, 



28 THE FIRST 

and work them into new shapes of beauty and 
utility. The instant life terminates decay com- 
mences, and the opposing constituents of the 
animal, which were harmonized and held to- 
gether by life, contend and separate. Art can 
not keep them in their old union. It may as 
well undertake to move Mount Atlas. Of our 
composition, about twelve-thirteenths, by weight, 
are liquid, and, when the remaining matter, 
resoluble into air by heat or time, has vanished, 
the earthy residuum is but a few poor handfuls. 
Charcoal — the skeleton of plants — when imbed- 
ded in the earth, seems indestructible; but our 
skeletons soon fall asunder, and waste away, and 
vanish in the soil. Eternity is not for this 
body, and its dissolution can not endanger the 
formation of that spiritual body which will 
clothe the soul in bliss. Vain were all the 
efforts of the old embalmers to perpetuate it. 
Their utmost skill sufficed only to preserve a 
shrunken, discolored, unsatisfying resemblance 
of the human form, defective in all likeness, 
majesty, and beauty. In their processes the 
essential organic moisture was dissipated, and 
they removed the brain and more perishable 
organs, so that, in fact, the most perfect mummy 
presents us with even less of the last dust of 
the body than the sarcophagus, without the em- 
balming, would have retained. Unaided nature, 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 20, 

for some reason, and by some process we do not 
understand, often outstrips, in this, Egyptian 
skill. Coffins which have been entombed for cen- 
turies, when opened, have disclosed bodies per- 
fect in form, and in all the freshness of recent 
death ; but, they were insubstantial images of 
corpses, and soon crumbled in the air into the 
dust they were. Indeed, the quick decay of the 
body is so natural, that superstition has brought 
strange charges against the dead in whom it was 
wanting. Nations, remote from each other, have 
believed in vampires — that demons sometimes 
take possession of and preserve dead bodies in the 
grave, and issue forth in them at night to suck 
out the lives of men : and, upon such suspicions, 
corpses that decayed not fast enough have been 
exhumed, staked through the heart, and burned, 
and their ashes given to the wind, in Christian 
Europe, not centuries ago. In this age, then, 
we strive not to preserve the frail carcass from 
corruption. We cheerfully consent that it should 
sink to ashes, in the firm faith that so much of 
it, if any, as shall be necessary to that mysteri- 
ous reunion of the soul and body which makes 
the resurrection, will be conserved by God. 

" Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and 
pompous in the grave." But how far avail post- 
humous splendor and funeral pomp? A name 
may be perpetuated through time, but monu- 



30 THE FIRST 

ments can not. The moralist may ask, what is 
long-enduring fame to the departed? Is Lazarus 
more happy in Abraham's bosom, or Dives less 
miserable in Hades, because their story is writ- 
ten where it must be read until the last trump 
sounds? But be this as it may, vain hitherto 
have been all efforts to secure a permanent 
record of the last resting-places of the great 
ones of the earth. Humble graves are every- 
where, "and nothing outward tells of human 
clay." Dispersed over three continents at least, 
are " high barrows, without marble or a name." 
Of these, some, probably, were erected over 
heroes, conquerors, and kings, who fondly 
trusted to tradition to preserve their fame and 
point out their tumuli ; and now, antiquarians 
delve for the miserable remnants of their bones, 
and wonder what people heaped up these hills. 
The river which, by Attila's command, was 
turned from its course to whelm his tomb, 
scarcely hastened the oblivion which was sure to 
cover it. Brass, and marble, and porphyry, and 
granite, have been invoked in vain to be per- 
petual witnesses. Where are all the monuments 
of old antiquity? How many known graves are 
there in Europe, which were dug a thousand 
years, or even five centuries ago? Where is the 
stone that Jacob set up for a pillar in Luz? — or 
the two stone tables of the law? — or the great 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 3 1 

stone which Joshua set up " in Shechem, under 
the oak that was by the sanctuary of the Lord, 
as a witness unto the people, lest they should 
deny their God?" Who can point out the field, 
and the cave in Macphelah, where Abraham and 
Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah, that 
most illustrious congregation of the dead, were 
buried ; or assure us of the safety of their ashes? 
That which is shown at Jerusalem, as the sep- 
ulcher in which Christ's body rested, is apocry- 
phal. If such sacred monuments have perished, 
or are forgotten, what duration, or remembrance, 
can be hoped for, or desired, for the memorials 
of ordinary events or worth? 

Time eats into the massy monuments, and 
obliterates the inscriptions of vanity and pride — 
the sea invades the land, and swallows them — 
storms uproot or dash them down — the solid 
earth shakes, and they crumble. If nature 
spares them, man intervenes for their destruc- 
tion. In the fury of revolution, and of conquest, 
he breaks them to fragments— he tears off the 
cerements and scatters the ashes of long buried 
kings. In his inquisitiveness and lust of gain, 
he pries into tombs, despoils them, and traffics 
in their ornament and dust. In the mutations 
of empire, history is perverted or becomes obliv- 
ious, and languages are lost, and symbols lose 
significance, so that old inscriptions become 



32 THE FIRST 

dumb and undecipherable. The pyramids would 
seem to have secured, so far as human art 
and massive structures could, repose and the 
remembrance of mankind co-enduring with the 
earth, for the kings for whom they were up- 
reared on their huge bases. But how long was 
it after their erection ere their history perished, 
and faithless tradition forgot them utterly ? 
And now, after a long oblivion that antiqua- 
rians, with great labor, read imperfectly their 
fading epitaphs, where are these kings? It was 
truly said long ago, " Mummy has become mer- 
chandise, Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh 
is sold for balsams." Truly, it was well said by 
Sir Thomas Browne, " Oblivion is not to be 
hired. The greater part must be content to be 
as though they had not been — to be found in 
the register of God, not in the record of man. 
Twenty-seven names make up the first story," — 
are all that are recorded in the world's history, 
from the creation to the flood. With this sen- 
tence we are content. We aim not to secure, 
against all chances, a resting-place forever, and 
an unfading memory of it. We ask but rest for 
our bones until they 're crumbled — an undis- 
turbed possession of a befitting grave, until all 
who may hallow our memory, and wish to visit 
it are gone. Then let the gravestone fall, the 
monument disappear, and the vacant space 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 33 

they guarded be again devoted to the uses of 
living man. 

Funeral obsequies, have been differently cele- 
brated «by different nations, but ceremation and 
inhumation have been the common modes. 
Burning prevailed among the Greeks and Ro- 
mans, though they sometimes* buried without it. 
It had these advantages in the eye of reason — 
that it did at once the work of slow corruption, 
and rendered the dead innocuous to the living, 
while the ashes and relics of combustion could 
be religiously collected, inclosed in urns, and 
buried in the earth. Still, in our view, it seems 
to violate the body, by anticipating the course of 
nature. Burial, or direct interment, is the more 
ancient, and always was the more extended cus- 
tom ; it leaves the corpse unviolated, to dissolve 
under % the gentler operation of the natural laws 
controlling it ; above all, our Saviour, when he 
had tasted death, was buried, and Christians 
have always recognized it as the Christian mode 
of disposing of the lifeless body. 

We owe a large debt of gratitude to those 
who have preceded and may precede us to the 
grave, and we hope that those who may perform 
our obsequies will recognize a similar debt to us. 
How and where shall we bury our dead? — how 
and where would we wish to be buried? We 
love to testify, when death has bereft us of our 
5 



34 THE FIRST 

loved ones, our sense of our bereavement — our 
estimation of their value in life — the fervor and 
tenacity of our affection — the bitterness of our 
grief, grieve though we may with hope". We 
rejoice that our separation is but for a season, 
and with the natural belief that the spirit rejoins 
the body at the place of interment, we desire 
that our ashes should be laid by theirs — that we 
may be placed "in the sacred storehouse of 
our predecessors " — that our children may sleep 
around us — that we may be surrounded by our 
friends and kindred. We would do great things 
for the dear dead. Shall we content ourselves 
with a grassy mound, a heap of stones, or a rude 
cross, without a name to tell who sleeps below — 
upon the plea that our affection will distinguish 
the grave; or be satisfied with putting at the 
head a simple stone to point out the spot, and so 
preserve, for absent friends, an indication of it — 
and say that aught more is waste and folly? 
Human nature is not so satisfied, and never has 
been so satisfied. Laws were never necessary 
to compel decent burial, or to enforce funeral 
mementoes; but laws have been made .to re- 
strain the extravagant expenditures of grief 
upon the dead. Let Nature, then, have way, 
and pile up the monumental marble, and beau- 
tify the grave ! Indulge the full luxury of grief, 
and begrudge not to the dead all fitting memo- 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 35 

rials of their virtues and your love. It is well 
that the world should have accumulated such 
enduring proofs of undying reverence for the 
dead ; and that piety which pursues them, and 
hallows their memories, however extravagant, 
brings holy lessons. 

Surely we would not, with Plato, banish the 
dead to the most barren lands ; nor would we 
pen them within the city's bounds. The an- 
cients, from a wise consideration both for the 
living and the dead, forbade, intramural inter- 
ments, and specially permitted interments within 
the walls as a rare honor. It is too true, that a 
crowded burial-place in the heart of a large town 
is very apt to become a nuisance, dangerous to 
the public health ; while, in the free air of the 
country, and with the liberal space allotted for 
burial in rural cemeteries, there can be no accu- 
mulation of noxious vapors. We ask for our 
tombs some permanency ; but how long will 
they securely stand, in the center of a crowded, 
and busy, and ever-shifting population, now 
shaken by the fear of pestilence, and now fevered 
by the rage for alteration and improvement? 
Alas ! in other cities, graveyards have been too 
frequently torn up to make way for streets and 
houses, and mouldering bones and ashes have 
been sold, by the cartload, for the meanest uses. 

We have a graveyard in the city, nearly full. 



2,6 THE FIRST 

One would think a glance at it would dispose 
forever of all question on this subject. It is a 
square, green place, inclosed by a brick wall, and 
hemmed in by houses that look down upon it. 
Its walls are well cared for, but it seems to 
receive no tendance ; and it is too open and ex- 
posed to be resorted to by the shy mourner. 
But one tree grows upon it — an unthrifty oak, 
cleft, and wide-gaping below, and hollow beyond 
the heart. Cattle poach upon it, and you will 
find there, rotting railings, broken monuments, 
and falling and tottering headstones. It has no 
beauty, and seems an unwelcome intruder in the 
thickening haunts of men, who are, or soon will 
be, anxious to get rid of it, as a deformity. And 
yet, there sleep, among the many nameless dead, 
some who were dearly loved, and are now 
sacredly remembered — some who were bright 
examples in their generation, the odor of whose 
sanctity is yet fresh on earth — and some brave 
men who died in battle for their country. 
Would that the sacred relics it embosoms could 
forthwith be disinterred, and reverently removed 
to some secure and fitting resting-place ; for it is 
too evident that, long before another generation 
shall have passed away, it will be a mass of 
hideous desolation, if it be not unholily uprooted. 
The dead are entitled to pleasant possessions, 
and to the friendly visitations of the living. 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 37 

When Abraham stood up from before his dead, 
and acquired a burying-place, he had assured to 
him, not only the field of Ephron, and the cave 
which was therein, " but all the trees that were 
in the fields, that were in all the borders round 
about." The Hebrews seem to have been par- 
ticularly wedded to rural burial. But the love 
of nature, and the desire to lie, in death, in the 
pleasant scenes we loved in life, seemed almost 
universal. Christ was buried in a garden ; and 
surely the Christian should desire that the grave 
should be stripped of the terrors with which 
superstition would encompass it — that the place 
of graves should be made attractive, so that the 
great lessons it teaches may be more widely 
taught, and take a deeper root. 

We can not but desire all pleasant things to 
surround our lost ones. Not for them should be 

" The churchyard's lonely mound, 
Where melancholy with still silence reigns, 
And the rank grass waves o'er the cheerless ground." 

When memory recalls a buried friend, our first 
wish is, "Green be the grass above thee." Mind- 
ful of the resurrection, in our climate annually 
typified by Nature, we would place our dear ones 
to slumber among the flowers, by the running 
streams, on the hill-sides, among the monu- 
mental oaks, where the birds build their nests 



38 THE FIRST 

and sing, the zephyrs play, and all is peaceful 
beauty : We would that the first " roses of the 
year" should shed their fragrance over their 
tombs — that winter's snow should lie lightly on 
them, and that returning spring should "deck 
their hallowed mould" with a fresher, and "a 
sweeter sod, than Fancy's foot has ever trod." 

The proprietors of this most beautiful domain 
have sought to gratify these most natural and 
laudable feelings, and to supply what was, till 
now, in truth, the prominent deficiency of Buf- 
falo. For one, from the bottom of my soul, I 
thank them. Here, in these "arched walks of 
twilight groves, and shadows brown," 

" The rude ax, with heaved stroke, 
Will ne'er be heard ;" 

But the dead will repose in solemn quietude and 
safety. There is, too, in the lawn above us, the 
rich fields, and the waving woods, a variety that 
can never stale, and Taste has full scope and 
ample room to gratify Affection's every wish. I 
can not assert that more beautiful grounds have 
nowhere been devoted to such sacred purposes ; 
but will you not justify me in saying, that there 
could not be, in the vicinity of Buffalo, a more 
appropriate and precious offering to them, than 
this Forest Lawn. 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 39 

May it be ever sacred ! For here, " the weary 
will be at rest, and the wicked cease from troub- 
ling." Here grief will experience comfort, and 
the wounded soul find balm. Here careless 
sleepers will wake from holy dreams, exclaiming, 
" Surely, the Lord is in this place." May it be 
to them, to us, to all, " none other than the house 
of God," and prove "The Gate of Heaven." 

In the name, and at the request of the propri- 
etors, with your concurrence, in the presence of 
God and his good angels, I most prayerfully and 
reverently sever this stream, these groves, and 
gently swelling knolls, these ample fields, that 
smiling upland, and the deep-seated, rocky ledge 
that skirts it, from all ordinary uses, and dedicate 
and devote them to the dead forever. 

The whole was concluded with a Benediction 
by Rev. Prof. Seager. 



HISTORICAL DETAIL. 



Difficulties to be Overcome — First Burial — Progress 

and Growth. 

Previous to the dedication of these Grounds, 
a number of the avenues were laid out, partially 
made, some portion of the same graded and sur- 
veyed into lots for burial purposes ; but no 
person seemed disposed to purchase "a posses- 
sion for a burial-place," and the prospects of 
converting them into a home for the dead were 
anything but flattering. Many stalwart obstacles 
arose, and public sentiment was decidedly unfa- 
vorable to the location of a Cemetery so far from 
the city, and the success of the enterprise was 
regarded as very doubtful. While Mr. Clarke, 
the projector of the Cemetery, and who planned 
and directed all the improvements, was exerting 
himself to the utmost to prepare the grounds for 
the purposes of sepulture, many of his personal 
friends cheered him in the prosecution of his 
favorite scheme, by expressing their, admiration 
for his energy and enterprise, and their sincere 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 4 1 

sympathy in case of a failure, which appeared 
self-evident. The Grounds, they said, were 
becoming beautiful, as the improvements pro- 
gressed ; but who would bury their dead in that 
lonely place? And it did certainly appear 
doubtful for a time whether any person would 
procure a burial-place there. 

But while doubt and uncertainty hung over 
the undertaking, an old and highly respected 
citizen was removed by death. In his lifetime, 
he was a generous, noble-hearted man. Affluence 
had rewarded his labors, and he was regarded as 
among the fortunate few who are above want. 
But the terrible reverses of 1836 swept away the 
accumulations of former years. Before he died, 
he visited " the new Cemetery," approved the 
plan of establishing a burial-place in a quiet 
rural spot, far away from the noise and tumult 
of a great city. 

He admired the Grounds, and pointed out a 
knoll, which he thought " appropriate and pleas- 
ant to sleep in, when the trials of life should be 
ended" After his decease, the proprietor tendered 
his family a Lot on the knoll which he had indi- 
cated. One summer afternoon, a funeral train 
entered the Grounds for the first time. It paused 
at the entrance. A procession was formed under 
the skillful charge of him who has laid to rest 
so many thousands. It moved slowly up the 



42 THE FIRST 

hill, preceded by Rev. Dr. Shelton, who read the 
burial service. The grave was reached — around 
it was gathered a weeping family, and a large 
number of old friends, who came to perform the 
last offices of friendship and affection for the 
departed. As the sun went down, the grave 
closed forever over the remains of John Lay, Jr. 
Forest Lawn had an occupant, and the place 
became dear to a bereaved family. This was 
the commencement of the peopling of a " city of 
slumbering mutes." 

Those who accompanied their old friend to 
the grave, were favorably impressed with the 
appearance of the Grounds, and their peculiar 
adaptation for a burial-place for the dead. 

Dr. Shelton, as he stood near the newly-made 
grave, surveying the grounds, and seeing the 
improvements that had been made, remarked, 
significantly, to a bystander, " What a tide of 
grief will be poured forth here." From this 
time the sale of Lots commenced, and Forest 
Lawn began to reckon up its silent census. 
Some fourteen hundred of our inhabitants now 
rest in Forest Lawn, beside those that were re- 
moved from the old burial grounds in the city. 
This fact is significant, as it shows the change in 
public sentiment, and demonstrates the influence 
which the beauty and appropriateness of Forest 
Lawn have finally exerted. 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 43 

The following are among the Rules and Reg- 
ulations adopted by the Trustees of the first 
Cemetery, to which, in many cases, little atten- 
tion has been paid by the Lot owners ; and they 
cannot complain if the rules shall be hereafter 
applied in such manner as to cause alterations in 
many grave-stone erections, and other items in 
which the rules have been disregarded. 

RULES AND REGULATIONS. 



If any trees or shrubs, situated in any Lot, 
shall, by means of their roots, branches, or other- 
wise, become detrimental to the adjacent lots or 
avenues, or unsightly, or inconvenient to passen- 
gers, it shall be the duty of the Association, and 
they shall have the right, to enter the said lot, 
and remove the said trees and shrubs, or such 
parts thereof as arc detrimental, unsightly, or 
inconvenient. 

If any monument, effigy, or inclosure, or any 
structure whatever, or any inscription, be placed 
in or upon any Lot, which shall be determined 
by the major part of the Trustees of the Asso- 
ciation for the time being, to be offensive and 
improper, or injurious to the appearance of the 
surrounding Lots or Grounds, the said Trustees, 
or a major part of them, shall have the right, 



44 THE FIRST 

and it shall be their duty, to enter upon such 
Lot, and remove the said offensive or improper 
object or objects. 

It shall be the duty of the Board of Trustees, 
from time to time, to lay out or alter such 
avenues or walks, and to make such rules and 
regulations for the Government of the Grounds 
as they may deem requisite and proper to secure 
and promote the general objects of the Insti- 
tution. 

No slabs will be allowed, unless placed in a 
horizontal position ;* and no head or foot-stones 
will be permitted exceeding eighteen inches in 
height above the ground. 

The Trustees have no wish to interfere with 
the taste of individuals in regard to the style of 
their improvements ; but yet, in justice to the 
interest of the whole, they reserve to themselves 
the right of preventing or removing any erection 
or inclosure which they shall consider injurious 
to the immediate locality, or prejudicial to the 
good appearance of the grounds ; and also of 
removing or pruning any trees or shrubbery 
which may obstruct, or mar the effect and 
beauty of the scenery, or may otherwise prove 
injurious, unsightly, or detrimental. 

* This shall apply to those already erected. 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 45 

The following article was written by Mr. 
Anson G. Chester, then associate editor of the 
Buffalo Express, and published in that paper. 
The sonnet which succeeds it is also from the 
same pen. 

FOREST LAWN. 



THe impulse which leads us to seek out and 
beautify some attractive spot for the resting- 
place of the departed, is as commendable as it is 
natural. It is difficult for us to divest ourselves 
of the idea that, after all, the dead are, in some 
degree, conscious of the circumstances which 
surround them — and our affections naturally 
reject the place of burial which is gloomy and 
unpleasant. It is among the beauties of the 
heart — this sweet reverence, and delicate care 
for its lost ones. 

We have a treasure of a spot, selected and 
consecrated to those who die in our midst. But 
a short time has elapsed since Forest Lawn was 
commenced; but through the faithful industry 
of its projector, Charles E. Clarke, Esq., it has 
already become a place to be desired for the 
holy purpose which led to its establishment. 
There are many beautiful points about this city 
of the dead, and these will be augmented as its 



46 THE FIRST 

population increases. Away from the busy 
town, a very nook of nature, with its soft turf, 
babbling stream, rustling leaves, and fresh-blown 
flowers, it seems a place most meet -md fitting 
for the sleep of those " whose voice is not 
heard." 

It is well to make these places lovely. It 
seems not so hard to die when the weary head 
may rest on such a bosom. 

" The grave itself is but a covered bridge, 
Leading from light to light, through a brief darkness." 

If this may be the reflection of the decaying 
mind, how athletic shall it be, even in the weak- 
ness of the final hour ! and it is such spots as 
Forest Lawn that suggest and enforce this wise 
and inspiriting philosophy. 

" The living know that they must die." Let 
them, therefore, choose, while they may, the 
place of their final slumber. Let them adorn 
and embellish it, until it shall seem so inviting 
that they shall long for its repose, and when the 
last solemn moment comes, shall smile at the 
gentle prospect of its perpetual enjoyment, and 
" lie down to pleasant dreams." 

In its comparative newness, Forest Lawn is 
yet beginning to answer its original intention. 
Already is its surface flecked with monuments, 
and stones, and " mounds without an index." 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 47 

These shall multiply. Let those who would 
make the home of the dead lovely, prepare it 
here. Blessed is he who hath a citizenship 
within its borders, for he shall dream amid 
beauties, and out of beauties hasten to his 
reward. 



FOREST LAWN. 



If it be sweet to hail the Judgment morn 

From the wide desert and the boundless sea, 
It were thrice sweet to welcome it from thee, 
Fair chamber of pale sleepers — " Forest Lawn !" 
Thy beauty half removes the sting of death ; 
It is not dying when a spot like this 
Offers its quietude, its peace, its bliss, 
To careworn exiles, yielding up their breath : 
Thou shalt be peopled ; in thine ample breast 
Fair babe and wrinkled man shall lie, until 
The trump of Gabriel every heart shall thrill, 
And call the nations from their dreamless rest ; 
Blessed is he to whom it shall be given, 
To pass from thy bright precincts unto heaven. 



xtmt (Jfflmi Jfaron. 



THE PRESENT 



Forest Lawn Cemetery. 



The foregoing pages have been devoted to 
the history of the first cemetery, now composing 
a part of the present more spacious and com- 
plete one. The work on this latter ground was 
commenced in the Spring of 1865. Several 
avenues and sections, and many burial lots, 
were laid out, sold, and occupied during that 
year. In 1866, some new avenues were projected 
and partially worked, and some additional sec- 
tions laid out and graded, and many more lots 
sold and occupied. The " Moffat Grove" and 
another tract adjoining — in both thirty-three 
acres — were added to the Cemetery, and in that 
year it was resolved by the Board of Trustees 
— their purchases now being completed — to have 
a formal dedication of the entire grounds to 
burial purposes. 



52 THE PRESENT 

The history of the establishment of the Cem- 
etery as it now stands, will be found in the ad- 
dress of Mr. Steele, among the proceedings in 
the ceremony of the dedication which follows. 

THE DEDICATION OF FOREST LAWN. 



This imposing ceremony took place on Fri- 
day, the 28th day of September, 1866. Ample 
preparations for the event had been made by a 
Committee from the Board of Trustees, who had 
arranged the order of services, and invited the 
Reverend Clergy of the city, the Masonic Orders, 
the Continental Singing Society, Mayor and 
Common Council of the city, the several speak- 
ers, and some others. 

A sub-Committee were charged with prepar- 
ing for the reception at the grounds, arranging 
the procession from the city, providing seats for 
the audience, the platform for the Trustees, the 
speakers, and invited guests, &c, all of which 
were done in excellent taste. 

At one o'clock p. m., the Masonic Fraternity, 
composed of about five hundred members, of the 
various Lodges of the city, assembled at the 
corner of Main and Genesee streets to take the 
street cars for the grounds. At the same hour 
the Board of Trustees, Clergy, Speakers, guests, 
&c, assembled at the rooms of the Young Men's 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 53 

Association. After organizing, they took car- 
riages, and at Genesee street the procession was 
formed — the Masons leading in the cars — and a 
long retinue of carriages, with a multitude of 
citizens and people on foot following. They pro- 
ceeded on Main street out of the city to the East 
gate of the Cemetery. There the concourse left 
the cars and carriages, and on foot again formed 
in procession, under the direction of the Chief 
Marshal, and moved into the grounds and up to 
the seats and platform in the following order : 

Detachment of* Thirty Frontier Policemen, under command 
- of Capt. Byrne. 

MARSHAL OF THE DAY, 

Major General Barry, U. S. Army. 

AIDS, 

Brig. Gen. Saxton, Capt. Eaton, Mr. F. F. Curry. 

Master Masons, under command of their Grand Marshal. 

Union Cornet Band. 

Knights Templars — Lake Erie Commandery. 

Hugh De Payen's Commandery. 

Representatives of the Grand Lodge of the State of New York. 

Continental Singing Society. 

His Honor the Mayor, City Officers, and Common Council. 

Trustees of Forest Lawn Cemetery. 

The Clergy of the City. 

Citizens Generally. 

The venerable Grove on the East bank of the 
stream, flowing through the grounds, had been 
selected for the dedication services. The day was 



54 THE PRESENT 

beautifully serene ; the stream, swelled by recent 
rains, was full, and waked by its low, cheerful 
murmur, the solemn stillness of the place ; the 
woods were glorious in their ripening, sun- 
lighted leaves, and threw a grateful shadow over 
the wide space around, while the green, close 
shaven turf gave unwonted freshness to the 
scene. Seats for about fifteen hundred persons 
had been provided, which, on the arrival of the 
procession, were rapidly filled by the Masonic 
Fraternity, Ladies, and Citizens generally, while 
the spacious platform was occupied by the Board 
of Trustees, the Clergy, the Continental Singing- 
Society, the speakers and readers for the occa- 
sion, invited guests, and the higher orders of the 
Masons. A large number of carriages, filled 
chiefly with ladies, were drawn up in close semi- 
circular order in rear of the seats on the front 
and sides of the platform, and intermediate, were 
thickly standing groups of men, numbering 
altogether about four thousand people. The 
whole scene was picturesque, imposing, beauti- 
ful ; and — in its stillness, order, and the sensa- 
tions awakened by such an unwonted occasion — 
of surpassing interest. 

At three o'clock the President of the Board of 
Trustees called the attention of the assemblage, 
and read the order of Exercises. These were 
then opened by the Rt. Rev. Bishop Coxe, of 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 55 

the Diocese of Western New York, in a service 
prepared by him for Episcopal dedications of 
burial grounds in his Diocese, and read as a 
part of the present services : 

DEDICATION SERVICE. 

Almighty Father, who art the Creator of our souls and bodies, 
be pleased to bless us, Thy servants, in the solemnity of dedi- 
cating this burial-place, and of invoking Thy holy name upon it, 
through Jesus Christ, our Lord, unto whom, with Thee, O 
Father, and the Holy Ghost, be all honor and glory, now and 
forever. Amen. 

Then was said: 
psalm xc. Domine, refiigium. 

1. Lord, thou hast been our refuge, from one generation to 
another. 

2. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth 
and the world were made, thou art God from everlasting, and 
world without end. 

3. Thou turnest man to destruction ; again thou sayest, Come 
again, ye children of men. 

4. For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday ; 
seeing that is past as a watch in the night. 

5. As soon as thou scatterest them they are even as a sleep, 
and fade away suddenly like the grass. 

6. In the morning it is green, and groweth up ; but in the 
evening it is cut down, dried up, and withered. 

7. For we consume away in thy displeasure, and are afraid at 
thy wrathful indignation. 

8. Thou hast set our misdeeds before thee ; and our secret 
sins in the light- of thy countenance. 

9. For when thou art angry all our clays are gone ; we bring 
our years to an end, as it were a tale that is told. 



56 THE PRESENT 

10. The days of our age are threescore years and ten; and 
though men be so strong that they come to fourscore years, yet 
is their strength then but labor and sorrow ; so soon passeth it 
away, and we are gone. 

ii. But who regardeth the power of thy wrath? for even 
thereafter as a man feareth, so is thy displeasure. 

12. So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our 
hearts unto wisdom. 

13. Turn thee again, O Lord, at the last, and be gracious 
unto thy servants. 

14. O satisfy us with thy mercy, and that soon; so shall we 
rejoice and be glad all the days of our life. 

15. Comfort us again now after the time that thou hast 
plagued us; and for the years wherein we have suffered 
adversity. 

16. Show thy servants thy work, and their children thy glory ^ 

17. And the glorious Majesty of the Lord our God be upon 
us : prosper thou the work of our hands upon us ; O prosper 
thou our handiwork. 

GLORIA PATRI. 

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost : 
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world 
without end. Amen. 

O God, who hast taught us that death is the end of all men, 
grant us who are living grace to lay it to heart, and to work 
while the clay lasts, because the night cometh, so that when we 
may be no longer stewards, we may be received fnto heavenly 
habitations, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. 

Then was said: 

Versicle. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. 

Response. Man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go 
about the streets. 

V. There is no man that hath power over the - spirit to retain 
the spirit ; 

R. Neither hath he power in the day of death. 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 57 

V. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to 
dust again ; 

R. For it is written, Dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou 
return. 

V. In the day when the silver cord shall be loosed and the 
golden bowl be broken : 

R. Or the pitcher broken at the fountain, and the wheel 
broken at the cistern ; 

V. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, 

R. And the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. 

V. Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, 

R. And the spirit of the beast that goeth downward ? 

V. I have said to corruption, Thou art my father ; to the 
worm, Thou art my mother and my sister. 

R. If a man die, shall he live again ? All the days of my 
appointed time will I wait till my change comes. 

V. Is there not an appointed time to man on earth ? 

R. Are not his days like the clays of a hireling? 

V. Let me die the death of the righteous ; 

R. And let my last end be like his ; 

V. For the earth shall cast out the dead, 

R. At the resurrection, in the last clay ; 

V. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the 
firmament ; 

R. When the earth and the works that are therein shall be 
burned up. 

V. Lord, hear our prayer ; 

R. And let our cry come unto Thee. 

Then tvas said: 

O God, who, in the old time, didst move Thy servant, Abra- 
ham, to provide for himself and for his children a possession of 
a burial place, make, we beseech Thee, this field to be a field 
which the Lord hath blessed ; that it may be unto those who 
live a memorial of their mortality, and unto those who die a 
place of burial for their corruptible bodies, and of safe and sure 
rest in the grave, until the trumpet shall sound and the dead 
8 



58 THE PRESENT 

shall arise to Judgment ; all which we beg through Him who is 
the Judge of quick and dead, Thy Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. 
Amen. 

Grant, O Lord, that the dead bodies that shall be here in- 
terred, may never be disturbed or dishonored by profane and 
sacrilegious men. Amen. 

Grant that all who shall visit this place, may decently come 
and go, and reverently respect the graves that shall be herein. 
Amen. 

Grant that all vain and foolish mirth and evil discourse may 
be put away from this place evermore. Amen. 

Grant that they who shall come here to bury their dead, may 
be consoled by Thy Holy Spirit. Amen. 

Grant that all who shall come here, like Mary, to weep over 
the graves of their dead, may remember the words of the Lord 
Jesus, how He said I am the Resurrection and the Life; he that 
believeth in me though he were dead, yet shall he live ; and 
whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Amen. 

Grant that all who shall yet be buried in this place, may have 
grace beforehand so as to number their clays as to incline their 
hearts to wisdom. Amen. 

Finally, we beseech Thee, grant unto every one of us who 
have assisted in this solemnity of dedication, so to lay it to heart 
that we may truly repent of our sins, and that when our earthly 
house of this tabernacle shall be dissolved, we may have a build- 
ing of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the 
heavens ; all which we beg through Jesus Christ, our Lord. 
Amen. 

The Bishop then read the following : 

To the honor and glory of God, and of the Son and of the 
Holy Ghost ; Amen. 

This burial-place and Cemetery is hereby declared and pro- 
nounced to be forever set apart and devoted, under the invoca- 
tion of the Divine Majesty, and under the protection of the 
Divine Providence, for the safe and sure repose of the corrupt!- 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 59 

ble bodies of those who are or shall be interred therein ; until 
the day, when the earth and sea shall give up their dead ; when 
the dead, great and small shall stand before God, and when the 
Lord Jesus Christ shall judge the world in righteousness and 
His people with His truth ; Amen. 

Then ivas said: 

Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name ; thy 
kingdom come ; thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. 
Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, 
as we forgive them who trespass against us ; and lead us not 
into temptation ; but deliver us from evil, for thine is the king- 
dom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen. 

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and 
the fellowship of the Holy Ghost be with us all. Amen. 

At the close of the reading the Rev. Dr. 
Shelton, Rector of St. Paul's Church, read the 
following Dedication Hymn written by Bishop 
Coxe. The Hymn was sung with great effect 
by the members of the Continental Singing 
Society, led by Mr. W. C. Williams. 

Lord, in the Autumn's shortening day, 

We gather here, a pilgrim band, 
Here where our bones we soon must lay, 

Above our future graves to stand. 

Where beasts have howled, and men as wild, 

With Pagan rites, profaned the sod, 
Accept the worship undefiled, 

That names these acres after God. 

The farm, the mart, the home are nigh, 

The city's hum may reach the ear ; 
But man's great business is to die ; 

Our last our longest home is here. 



6o THE PRESENT 

Here from their work shall thousands rest ; 

Here shall the worm their pride despoil ; 
Here all that 's dearest, brightest, best, 

Like Autumn's leaves must feed the soil. 

In vain we plant, we build, we pile ; 

In vain the stately city grows ; 
Here shall its thousands rest erewhile ; 

Here back to earth its glory goes. 

Lord, who for this 'mid things so vain ; 

Would seek to wage earth's daily strife ? 
Or who could bear its woe and pain, 

Were this our end, and such our life ? 

Be ours the hope Thy promise gives, 
From death's dark vale to lift the eye ; 

We know that our Redeemer lives ; 
To live is Christ ; 't is gain to die. 

Rev. Alexander McLean, of Calvary Church, 
next read the 23d and parts of the 49th and 
50th chapters of Genesis, as follows : 

And Sarah was a hundred and seven and twenty years old ; 
these were the years of the life of Sarah. 

And Sarah died in Kirjath-arba; the same is Hebron in the 
land of Canaan ; And Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and 
to weep for her. 

And Abraham stood up from before his dead, and spake 
unto the sons of Heth, saying, 

I am a stranger and a sojourner with you : give me a pos- 
session of a burying-place with you, that I may bury my dead 
out of my sight. 

And the children of Heth answered Abraham, saying unto 
him, 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 6 1 

Hear us, my lord ; thou art a mighty prince among us : 
in the choice of our sepulchres bury thy dead : none of us shall 
withhold from thee his sepulchre, but that thou mayest bury 
thy dead. 

And Abraham stood up and bowed himself to the people 
of the land, even to the children of Heth. 

And he communed with them, saying, If it be your mind 
that I should bury my dead out of my sight, hear me, and en- 
treat for me to Ephron the son of Zohar, 

That he may give me the cave of Machpelah, which he 
hath, which is in the end of his field ; for as much money as it 
is worth he shall give it me, for a possession of a burying-place 
among you. 

And Ephron dwelt among the children of Heth. And 
Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham in the audience of the 
children of Heth, even of all that went in the gate of his city, 
saying, 

Nay, my lord, hear me ; the field give I thee, and the cave 
that is therein, I give it thee ; in the presence of the sons of my 
people give I it thee : bury thy dead. 

And Abraham bowed down himself before the people of 
the land. 

And he spake unto Ephron in the audience of the people 
of the land, saying, But if thou wilt give it, I pray thee, hear 
me : I will give thee money for the field : take it of me, and I 
will bury my dead there. 

And Ephron answered Abraham, saying unto him, 

My lord, hearken unto me : the land is worth four hundred 
shekels of silver ; what is that betwixt me and thee ? bury there- 
fore thy dead. 

And Abraham hearkened unto Ephron, and Abraham 
weighed to Ephron the silver which he had named in the au- 
dience of the sons of Heth, four hundred shekels of silver, 
current money with the merchant. 

And the field of Ephron, which was in Machpelah, which 
was before Mamre, the field and the cave which was therein, 



62 THE PRESENT 

and all the trees that were in the field, that were in all the bor- 
ders round about, were made sure 

Unto Abraham for a possession in the presence of the 
children of Heth, before all that went in at the gate of his city. 

And after this, Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave 
of the field of Machpelah, before Mamre : the same is Hebron 
in the land of Canaan. 

And the field, and the cave that is therein were made sure 
unto Abraham for a possession of a burying-place, by the sons 
of Heth. 

And Jacob called unto his sons, and said, Gather yourselves 
together, ********* 

And he charged them, and said unto them, I am to be 
gathered unto my people : bury me with my fathers in the cave 
that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, 

In the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which is 
before Mamre, in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought 
with the field of Ephron the Hittite, for a possession of a 
burying-place. 

(There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife ; there 
they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife ; and there I buried 
Leah.) 

The purchase of the field and of the cave that is therein 
zvas from the children of Heth. 

And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his 
sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the 
ghost, and was gathered unto his people. 

And Joseph fell upon his father's face, and wept upon him, 
and kissed him. 

And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to 
embalm his father ; and the physicians embalmed Israel. 

And forty days were fulfilled for him ; for so are fulfilled 
the days of those which are embalmed ; and the Egyptians 
mourned for him threescore and ten days. 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 63 

And when the days of his mourning were past, Joseph 
spake unto the house of Pharaoh, saying, If now I have found 
grace in your eyes, speak, I pray you, in the ears of Pharaoh, 
saying, 

My father made me swear, saying, Lo, I die : in my grave 
which I have digged for me in the land of Canaan, there shalt 
thou bury me. Now therefore let me go up, I pray thee, and 
bury my father, and I will come again. 

And Pharaoh said, Go up, and bury thy father, according 
as he made thee swear. 

And Joseph went up to bury his father : and with him went 
up all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house, and all 
the elders of the land of Egypt, 

And all the house of Joseph, and his brethren, and his 
father's house : only their little ones, and their flocks, and their 
herds, they left in the land of Goshen. 

And there went up with him both chariots and horsemen : 
and it was a very great company. 

And they came to the threshing-floor of Atad, which is 
beyond Jordan, and there they mourned with a great and very 
sore lamentation : and he made a mourning for his father seven 
days. 

And when the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, 
saw the mourning in the floor of Atad, they said, This is a 
grievous mourning to the Egyptians : wherefore the name of it 
was called, Abelmizraim, which is beyond Jordan. 

And his sons did unto him according as he commanded 
them : 

For his sons carried him into the land of Canaan, and 
buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah, which Abra- 
ham bought with the field, for a possession of a burying-place 
of Ephron the Hittite, before Mamre. 

And Joseph returned into Egypt, he and his brethren, 
and all that went up with him to bury his father. 



64 THE PRESENT 

Mr. Oliver G. Steele, Vice President of the 
Association, then delivered the following 

HISTORICAL ADDRESS. 



Mr. President and Fellow Citizetis of the City of Buffalo: 

It has been thought proper upon this occasion 
to prepare and submit to the citizens of Buffalo, 
a brief historical statement of the various burial 
places which have existed since the settlement 
of the town, and down to the present time. 

The first ground designated and occupied for 
burial purposes, was that now known as " Frank- 
lin Square." The earliest authentic information 
I have been able to obtain in regard to this 
ground, is as follows : 

In 1804, or 1805, a man named John Coch- 
rane, from Connecticut, died at a tavern on the 
west side of Main street, near the Terrace. 
There was then no regular burying-place for the 
little settlement then gathering at this point, 
and the necessity of providing one became ap- 
parent. Dr. Cyrenius Chapin and Mr. Samuel 
Pratt were then prominent settlers, and applied 
to Mr. Ellicott, the agent of the Holland Land 
Company, for the dedication of a lot for that 
purpose. They themselves selected the ground 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 65 

now bounded by Church, Delaware and Eagle 
streets, being lots 108, 109, in, and 112. The 
ground was then unimproved, and was selected 
on account of the favorable character of the soil, 
and being the first high ground from the lake 
and river. A verbal consent was obtained from 
Mr. Ellicott, and Mr. Cochrane was the first 
person interred in the ground. Tradition says 
that the second interment was an Indian, remark- 
able as being very tall, and was satirically called 
"The Infant." 

From this time, the ground was recognized as 
the burial ground of the settlement, and of the 
village, until the organization of the city. 

With the usual carelessness of early settlers, 
no title was obtained to the property until 1821, 
when the lots were conveyed to the Trustees of 
the village of Buffalo, and in 1833, to the Corpo- 
ration of the city of Buffalo. 

There was no individual ownership in the lots, 
the ground being awarded by the Trustees of 
the village when required for burial purposes. 
The ground continued to be used as a public 
cemetery until the city government was estab- 
lished, in 1832, when it was discontinued. 

The last burial in this ground was the wife of 
Judge Samuel Wilkeson, and daughter of Mr. 
Gamaliel St. John, by special permission of the 
Common Council, in 1836. 
9 



66 THE PRESENT 

In 1832, in anticipation of the approach of 
cholera, the city purchased the ground on North 
street, cast of Michigan, for a public burial 
ground, and the first victims of the cholera were 
there buried. The city at the same time prohib- 
ited burials in the old ground on Church street. 
A portion of this new ground was set apart for 
the Roman Catholics. 

This ground was also public, and had no sepa- 
rate ownership of lots. 

The public burial ground for the town of 
Black Rock was set apart for that purpose, by 
the Commissioners of the Land Office, in 1830. 
The ground thus appropriated, was lot No. 88, 
bounded by Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Fourteenth 
streets, and the mile line. When North street 
was worked through, it left a triangular piece on 
the south side of North street, within the old 
limits of the city of Buffalo. This piece, by an 
arrangement with the Trustees of the village of 
Black Rock, was set apart for the use of the 
County Poor House, then situated at the inter- 
section of North and York streets. 

The main lot was the burial ground of the 
village of Black Rock for many years, but is 
now discontinued. The triangle south of North 
street has been appropriated by the city for a 
public pound, and the main ground has been 
conveyed to the Trustees of the Charity Foun- 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 67 

dation of the Episcopal Church. There was no 
individual ownership of lots in this ground. 

In 1 85 1, the grounds on Church and Delaware 
streets were abandoned to the public, and an ar- 
rangement made with the owners of Forest 
Lawn Cemetery, by which a sufficient lot was 
obtained, and all the bodies were removed to the 
new grounds. The number of bodies removed 
was about 1,200. In 1852, a memorial monu- 
ment was erected by the city upon this ground. 

The first private burying ground was organ- 
ized in 1830, by an association of gentlemen, the 
first Trustees being George B. Webster, Russell 
II. Heywood, Heman B. Potter, Lewis F. Allen, 
and Hiram Pratt. The ground consisted of 
about five acres, situated at the intersection of 
Delaware, North, and Bowery streets, and was 
purchased of Judge Walden for that purpose. 

A considerable number of lots were sold, and 
burials to some extent were made. The small- 
ness of the lot, however, prevented any extensive 
improvements, and few burials have taken place 
for many years. The unsold lots have been 
conveyed to the Trustees of this Cemetery Asso- 
ciation. 

This arrangement, it is believed, will be gene- 
rally approved by our citizens. 

In 1834-5, negotiations were entered into by 
the city to purchase additional ground, on North 



68 THE PRESENT 

street, east of and adjoining the property ac- 
quired in 1832. 

While these negotiations were pending, the 
grounds were purchased by Sylvester Mathews 
and Birdseye Wilcox, who organized a cemetery 
on private account. In 1835, tne grounds were 
cleared, fenced and laid out in lots, for sale to 
individuals. The grounds being superior in 
many respects to the Delaware street grounds, 
lots were readily taken by our citizens, and it 
soon became the principal burying-place. Sales 
of lots for the benefit of Mathews and Wilcox 
were continued until 1853. 

In that year several of the lot owners, finding 
that the grounds were neglected by the proprie- 
tors, opened a negotiation for the purchase of 
their interest. This was effected during that 
season, the purchase money being raised by sub- 
scription among the lot owners. 

In 1854, an act incorporating the Association 
was obtained, and in May of that year, the 
Trustees named in the act met and organized 
by the appointment of the officers under the 
title of the " Buffalo Cemetery Association." All 
the unsold lands were conveyed to the new 
company for #5,000. This organization still 
exists, but the improvement of the grounds has 
been retarded by the superior attractions of the 
Forest Lawn Cemetery. 

In 1849, ^ was thought by many of our 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 69 

citizens, that a cemetery on a more extended 
scale, and with more attractive surroundings, was 
required for our city. An effort was made to 
effect this organization upon the broad basis of 
general interests, instead of individual enter- 
prise. The proposition was feebly seconded, and 
no results followed. 

The grounds were therefore purchased by Mr. 
Charles E. Clarke, who proceeded to lay them 
out on a liberal scale, and with many of the 
modern improvements. The arrangements and 
grounds being much more attractive than any of 
their predecessors, it was adopted without hesi- 
tation by our citizens, and soon became the 
general burying-place for our Protestant popu- 
lation. In 1855, it passed into the possession 
of a corporation created that year, under the 
name of the " Forest Lawn Cemetery Associa- 
tion of the city of Buffalo." 

Under this organization, the Cemetery has 
been as well and as satisfactorily conducted as 
could be expected of a private corporation. A 
considerable number of elegant monuments have 
been erected, and many of the private lots highly 
improved. The whole has been creditable to the 
corporation and to individual owners. 

But there has existed for many years a desire 
among our citizens for a Cemetery on a broader 
scale, both in extent of grounds and in scope of 



70 THE PRESENT 

interest. It was felt that our city had become 
populous and wealthy, and that extensive 
grounds should be provided, before the march of 
private improvement should absorb all lands 
suitable for that purpose. There has existed also 
a strong feeling, which has been constantly in- 
creasing, that the great Cemetery of the city 
should not be held by a private corporation, 
subject to the vicissitudes to which all individual 
and corporate interests are liable. It was deeply 
impressed upon the minds of all whose attention 
had been called to the subject, that the time had 
arrived when a Cemetery should be established 
on a scale sufficient for the prospective require- 
ments of the city for many generations, and on 
the broad basis of public interest. 

This pervading feeling finally induced action, 
and on the 19th of November, 1864, a meeting 
was held at the office of O. H. Marshall, Esq., 
for the purpose of considering the subject. The 
following gentlemen were present at the meet- 
ing : James P. White, Oliver G. Steele, Lewis F. 
Allen, O. H. Marshall, Elijah Ford, Everard 
Palmer, Chandler J. Wells, Sidney Shepard, 
George Truscott, Charles W. Evans, DeWitt C. 
Weed, Joseph Warren, John D. Shepard, Jabez 
B. Bull, George L. Newman, James M. Smith, 
Gibson T. Williams, Walter Cary, Nelson K. 
Hopkins, and Henry Martin. 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 7 I 

The meeting was addressed by several gentle- 
men, and the whole subject discussed at length. 
It was unanimously resolved to organize a new 
Cemetery, under the name of the " Buffalo City 
Cemetery." The number of Trustees was fixed 
at twelve, and the organization was effected by 
the election of the following gentlemen as Trus- 
tees: Dexter P. Rumsey, DeWitt C. Weed, 
George Truscott, Sidney Shepard, Lewis F. 
Allen, Oliver G. Steele, Everard Palmer, Henry 
Martin, O. H. Marshall, Francis H. Root, 
Russell H. Heywood, and George Howard. 

At a meeting of the Trustees, held at Mr. 
Marshall's office on the 21st of November, 1864, 
the organization was reported legally complete, 
and the Board organized by the election of the 
following officers : 

Everard Palmer, President. 

Oliver G. Steele, Vice President. 

DeWitt C. Weed, Secretary and Treasurer. 

The Board immediately took up the subject of 
acquiring suitable grounds. A negotiation was 
opened with the proprietors of the Forest Lawn 
Cemetery, which resulted in the purchase and 
transfer of all their unsold lots, together with 
the franchise, to the new corporation. The 
Board also purchased the following tracts of 
land, all adjoining the Forest Lawn Cemetery : 



72 



THE PRESENT 




The Swartz Farm, . 


67 1-2 acres 


Moffat Grove, .... 


22 1-2 " 


Watson Tract in do., . 


II 


Part of Granger Farm, . 


27 " 


Forest Lawn Property, 


75 


Total, 


203 acres. 



Of this, it is estimated that less than 50 acres 
have been selected and occupied, leaving 153 
acres still to be located. It will be seen, there- 
fore, that ample provision is made for the burials 
of many years. 

The money to secure the purchases of lands 
referred to, was raised by the issue of the bonds 
of the corporation, payable in ten years from 
January 1st, 1865, with annual interest, and 
being at all times receivable in payment for lots. 
These bonds were liberally taken by our citizens, 
and the Trustees have full confidence that the 
sales of lots will supply the means to extinguish 
the debt within a reasonable time. 

When this is accomplished or provided for, 
the whole net proceeds of sales of lots will be 
perpetually applied to the improvement and em- 
bellishment of the grounds. 

Such, Fellow Citizens, is the history of our 
old Cemeteries, and thus far of the present or- 
ganization. It has required the patient and 
persistent attention of its officers, but it has been 
a labor of love. 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 73 

No motive, but that of providing for our 
beautiful city an appropriate resting-place for the 
dead, has actuated its projectors. No personal 
interest can be subserved under its auspices, and 
we look with confidence to you for such active 
co-operation as will enable the Trustees to effect 
all the contemplated objects. 

Rev. John C. Lord, D. D., of the Central 
Presbyterian Church, then read the following 
Original Ode : 

Place for the dead — 
Not in the noisy City's crowd and glare, 
By heated walls and dusty streets, but where 
The balmy breath of the free summer air 
Moves murmuring softly o'er the new-made grave, 
Rustling among the boughs which wave 

Above the dwellers there. 

Rest for the dead — 
Far, far from the turmoil and strife of trade, 
Let the broken house of the soul be laid, 
Where the violets blossom in the shade, 
And the voices of Nature do softly fall 
Over the silent sleepers all — 

Where rural graves are made. 

Room for the dead — 
Away from the crowded and ghastly caves, 
Where the dead lie heap'd and the thick strewn graves 
Do jostle each other like following waves — 
In the place where earth's broad bosom yields 
Room for the dead, in woods and fields, 

Which dying nature craves, 
10 



74 THE PRESENT 

Place for the dead — 
In the quiet glen where the wild vines creep, 
And the desolate mourner may wait and weep, 
In some silent place, o'er the loved who sleep ; 
Nor sights, nor sounds profane, disturb their moan- 
With God and with the dead alone — 

" Deep calleth unto deep." 

Rest for the dead — 
Away from all walls — where the wild bird sings, 
And the hurrying cloud its shadow flings 
O'er streamlet and rock, where the ivy clings 
To the ancient oak — the dead should lie, 
Till on the ear of death the cry 

Of final judgment rings. 

Peace for the dead — 
After life's warfare let the dead repose 
Where no levies are made — no usurer goes, 
No taxes, no debts, no pecuniary woes, 
To transfer to strangers the sanctified ground 
Which the wayworn and weary have happily found- 
Where Lethe, waveless, flows. 

Homes for the dead — 
Where the kindred who dwell together here 
May guard their own Necropolis, and rear 
The Household Marble — as the sombre bier 
Brings each departed to the destined home — 
Let the name be graven on the stone — 

To memory ever dear. 

Room for the dead — 
The living wait their doom, the gay, the strong, 
The beautiful, together soon must throng 
The doors of death, and they who mourn, ere long, 
Must lie with kindred dust, and, soon or late, 
All pass the ever open gate — 

Room — room, Oh! give them room! 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 75 

Next in order, Mr. Lewis F. Allen, on behalf 
of the Board of Trustees, delivered the follow- 
ing Address : 

Friends and Associates: — 

It is well, as events arrest the ordinary current 
of our pursuits, to take a landmark of other and 
more striking character than those which usually 
occur amid the toils and anxieties of our daily 
engagements. An event of extraordinary inter- 
est now arrests the attention of us, of Buffalo 
— one seldom occurring, even in larger commu- 
nities, and never before, in its full measure of 
completeness, with this. We have congregated 
here, in the serenity of a heavenly day, beneath 
this matchless canopy of leaf and sky, and amid 
the luxuriant beauty of surrounding nature, to 
discharge a solemn duty, to dedicate this ground 
to the repose of the dead, to the deepest affec- 
tions of the living. 

The Vice President of our Association has 
related to you the history of our efforts, and the 
degree of success which has, thus far, attended 
them in the acquisition and improvement of 
these grounds. We congratulate you, and with 
you the community who have so liberally aided 
the accomplishment of an enterprise henceforth 
to remain a distinguishing feature among the 



76 THE PRESENT 

institutions which adorn, and give character to 
our city. 

The decent sepulture and preservation of their 
dead, has ever been a prominent impulse with 
all peoples who have attained any considerable 
degree of civilization. You have heard the 
story of the early Patriarchs, and the burial of 
their cherished dead in the cave of Machpelah, 
which Abraham purchased of the sons of Heth. 
The loftiest pyramid stretching its colossal 
shadow over the valley of the Nile, has none so 
touching and simple a record as the rural field 
of Mamre. The burial grounds of the Israelites 
were hallowed spots. Their reverence for the 
graves of their dead was a marked feature of 
their character, and many of the dearest associ- 
ations in their sublime history are connected 
with their places of sepulture. Even now, the 
most attractive points of pilgrimage to the Holy 
Land are the resting-places of the Patriarchs, 
Saints, and Martyrs of the Old and New 
Testaments. 

With civilized nations of Pagans, and Idola- 
ters, as well as the Hebrews, caves excavated 
in the solid rock, vaults of spacious area, walled 
with imperishable marble, and tombs of elabo- 
rate architecture and costliest magnificence, 
above ground, were constructed as resting-places 
for the rich and powerful, in which their bodies 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 77 

in the flesh were deposited, or, as was more or 
less the custom, their ashes, from burning, were 
collected and placed in urns and sarcophagi, — 
not the promiscuous mingling of " dust unto 
dust," as in later periods has been the practice — 
but the intended preservation of their remains 
for all time. From Egyptian tombs of thou- 
sands of years' duration, multitudes of their 
embalmed dead have been exhumed, and in their 
pitchy cerements — may be a Ptolemy, or Cleo- 
patra — revisited the living world, and were 
exhibited as curiosities, or devoted to profaner 
uses. The ruins of ancient Thebes are almost 
one vast Necropolis. The catacombs of Rome 
are still the depositories of millions of its ancient 
dead, and other cities of later time are vaulted 
underneath with cemeteries. 

Although Britain, the chief land of our an- 
cestry, and other European nations, retain, to 
some extent, the cathedrals and monumental 
piles of olden time as depositories of their 
illustrious dead, the church-yards, and field 
cemeteries, for many centuries, have been the 
chief burial-places. Yet, so addicted to a per- 
sistent custom and a narrow locality have been 
their people that, for centuries past, those 
church-yards and cemeteries, crowded to reple- 
tion, have been despoiled of their dead to receive 
later remains, and, even at this day, are yielding 



78 THE PRESENT 

up the dust of those long buried to give place to 
the dead of yesterday. The skull of a king's 
jester, as in Hamlet's time, may be carelessly 
tossed out from the shovel of a grave-digger, 
and his decayed coffin thrown up in the com- 
mingled earth, to make room for the " fair and 
unpolluted flesh " of a still mourned Ophelia. 
Portions of the celebrated Pere la Chaise, in 
which the common people of Paris are buried, 
in fixed cycles of years are exhumed of their 
remains, to receive the recently deceased, in turn 
to be thrown up for the reception of those who 
die thereafter. 

Rejecting alike the false effort of ancient 
times, which sought, through encasements of 
stone or other indestructible material, to give 
immortality to the remains of their dead, and 
the grosser neglect of later days to preserve the 
remains of their dead at all, under the softening 
influences of a purer Christianity and a higher 
culture, the people of the present century — to 
some extent in Europe, and much more in 
America — have sought and instituted a marked 
improvement in their modes of burial. For the 
neglect of the two or three past centuries in 
Britain, and followed in America, the Christian 
Reformation is somewhat responsible. The Pu- 
ritans and Reformers of the time, disgusted with 
the exactions of a despotic and overbearing 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 79 

system of worship, and Church and State 
government, against which they had declared 
uncompromising hostility, carried their contempt 
of the prevailing formalities so far that they 
discarded all but the simplest funeral rites at 
the grave. " Dust unto dust," they consigned 
their beloved ones to the earth, and a decent 
head-stone and slight inscription, were the end 
of it. The mild disciples of George Fox, 
severer still in their modes of sepulture, planted 
not even a stone to mark their places of burial, 
while those of the Established Reformed Church 
preserved a modified funeral service, and gave 
monuments and more elaborate memorials to 
their dead. Happily, we, in America particu- 
larly, are improving on parts of this. Instead 
of repulsive wastes, marked more by neglect 
and decay than care and reverence, spacious 
areas of ground, adorned with types of beauty 
and symbols of love, and consecrated by the 
holiest affections, have taken their places. Yet, 
the hearts of many of us cling to past memories. 
Those neglected depositories, both abroad and 
at home, have awaked the most exalted senti- 
ments in the living, as well as perpetuated the 
dearest recollections of the dead. The history, 
and poetry, and romance of our language, are 
full of their touching memories. Those of us 
familiar with the older towns and cities of our 



80 THE PRESENT 

country, will call to mind their venerable church- 
yards, filled with sunken graves and leaning 
head-stones, as well as the sequestered enclosure, 
apart by the wayside, where the dead of the past, 
and a part of the present centuries, lie buried. 
We have lingered long and fondly within those 
retired spots. With reverent hands we have 
pushed aside the brambles which covered their 
memorials, mayhap 

" With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked," 

— for we have them here, as well as in the old 
English church-yards — to trace some hallowed 
name, or the records of a mighty deed. Yet, 
with all their venerable, even fond associations, 
they were forbidding to the eye, and, unless 
attracted by some dear memory, or a distin- 
guished name, we instinctively avoided their 
presence. And there still sleep our ancestors in 
their humble, unmarked dust, or haply memo- 
rialized in their acts of piety, or wisdom, or 
valor. 

The vaults of many of the early churches in 
our older cities are full of the dead. - In the 
necessities of past years for the removal of 
many of them, and still often occurring to ac- 
commodate the increasing wants of business, a 
fearful sacrilege has been made of their dust ; 
and, although the necessity seemed imperative, 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 8 I 

not the less shocking to a refined sentiment has 
been the desecration. To avoid a like occur- 
rence with us, is amply to provide for the 
disposition of our own dead, many of us having, 
for the third time, to discharge this painful duty, 
although our city dates scarce sixty years from 
its first settlement. 

To James Hillhouse, an eminent civilian, of 
New Haven, Connecticut, we are indebted for 
the first public ornamental burying ground in 
the United States. His love of trees, and tree 
planting, and the beautiful effect of landscape 
gardening in rural scenery, suggested to him 
their application to the uses of a cemetery. In 
the year 1796 — seventy years ago — Judge Hill- 
house purchased ten acres of land, just outside 
of New Haven. The succeeding year, with the 
aid of a few friends of his enterprise, he obtained 
a charter from the Legislature of the State for 
incorporating " The Proprietors of the New 
Burying Ground in New Haven." The object 
quaintly set forth for this extraordinary act, was 
with a view to obtain a place " larger, better 
arranged for the accommodation of families, 
and, by its retired situation, better calculated 
to impress the mind with a solemnity becoming 
the repository of the dead." The grounds were 
leveled and enclosed, and thirty-two subscribers 
agreed to pay fourteen dollars each for the 
11 



82 THE PRESENT 

purchase money and expenses, amounting, 
altogether, to the sum of four hundred and 
forty-eight dollars. This amount was after- 
wards increased to the sum of $1,666.66, for the 
further expense of fencing, painting, and plant- 
ing, "for which one hundred and seventy-six 
lots, each containing five hundred and forty 
square feet, were set apart, and valued at such 
prices, from five to ten dollars each — (one to 
two cents a foot,) — as would cover the cost." 
That was sixty-nine years ago — the day of small 
things in Connecticut, as we may presume, in 
the price of burying lots, at least, when we 
compare the fact that a single family in Buffalo 
have purchased one plat in this cemetery at the 
price of four thousand five hundred dollars for 
the ground alone ! 

Although thus fairly commenced, the new 
burying ground proceeded haltingly, until Sep- 
tember, in the year 1800, when only a few lots 
had been sold, " and, of course, the proprietors 
were in arrears, and probably unwilling to make 
further advances, either to lay out and improve 
new grounds, or to keep in repair those already 
laid out." So low, indeed, had the state of 
affairs become, "that Judge Hillhouse came 
forward and offered to take the whole upon 
himself ; to pay off the debts, make the contem- 
plated improvements, and hold the property 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 83 

until it should be sold at cost to pay the whole 
expenses." This proposition was accepted, and 
"Judge Hillhouse encumbered himself with an 
expense of about fourteen hundred dollars, for 
which, by the sale of lots at cost, he was enabled 
to reimburse himself, at the end of thirty years 
afterwards, but then not quite in full!' It ap- 
pears, however, that through all these years of 
tribulation, "in September, 1 8 14, all the lots in 
the new burying ground had been sold, and 
great distress for want of further burying- 
ground having been experienced, thirty-two citi- 
zens purchased eight acres more land adjoining, 
at the price of sixteen hundred dollars, (being at 
the rate of $53,121-2 to each subscriber,) and 
added to the original ten, making eighteen acres 
altogether;" and a provision was made in the 
deed, " that any surplus of money, or saving in 
the concern, should be applied to the future 
repairs of the entire ground." Thus, after this 
purchase was added, its cost and improvements 
had run up a debt of $2,840; but by various 
manipulations, " the debt was reduced to $2,000, 
and leaving one hundred and thirty-eight lots to 
be sold at different rates, from three to twenty- 
five dollars each, to pay off the same." 

The day of trial with the original ten acres 
still held by Judge Hillhouse, independent of 
the eight acres last purchased, was not yet 



84 THE PRESENT 

passed, for in the year 1817, "a tax was levied 
on the proprietors at twenty-five, fifty, and 
seventy-five cents a lot, according to its situa- 
tion ; and a committee was appointed to repair 
the fences, and ' at their discretion to cause the 
poplar trees to be removed, and such number of 
other trees as they may judge expedient, to be 
set out in lieu thereof. ' The committee caused 
one-half the poplar trees to be removed, but it is 
not known that they set any other trees in 
lieu thereof. The tax above mentioned being- 
found insufficient, in January, 18 18, an additional 
tax of fifty cents to two dollars was laid on each 
lot." This, also, was a day of small things in 
New Haven, and that while the University of 
Yale stood second only to Harvard in the whole 
United States, was widely patronized, the vene- 
rated Dwight — scholar, author, poet and divine 
— was at its head, and embryo statesmen, theolo- 
gians, and civilians, since world famous, were 
annually graduating, by scores and fifties, from 
its halls. 

But times changed. Hillhouse, illustrious 
and honored in life, had been gathered to his 
fathers, and taken his place within the ground 
he had so long loved and tended ; one and a-half 
generations of New Haven had passed away 
since the memorable benefactor of the "new 
burying-ground " had projected its formation, 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 85 

and a new and largely increased population had 
taken their places. In the year 1841, (forty-five 
years from the date of its beginning,) by joint 
and resolute action of the then proprietors, and 
the city authorities, the cemetery was relieved of 
its difficulties, extensive improvements, in the 
way of trees, and stone and iron fences to 
enclose the premises, were commenced. In the 
f year 1845, the corner-stone of its grand gateway 
was laid, with imposing ceremonies; and now, 
at an expense of $25,000, securely enclosed, 
deeply shaded, and comely in appearance, with a 
reserved fund of $10,000 for perpetual repairs, 
the New Haven burying-ground stands first in 
time of all our ornamental cemeteries. 

I have'thus particularly alluded to the history 
of this ground, as it gave tone and impulse to 
its immediate successors, and also to record the 
tardy reluctance with which an old and fixed 
community yielded their ancient customs to the 
adoption of new enterprises.^ 

Thirty-five years afterwards, Boston next fol- 
lowed New Haven, and laid out the cemetery of 
Mount Auburn, in Cambridge, an emanation 
from the managers of the Massachusetts Horti- 
cultural Society, and then a part of its property, 

* For this information, I am indebted to the " History of the City 
Burial Ground of New Haven," published in 1863, se "t me by my 
friend, Donald G. Mitchell, Esq., of that city. 



86 THE PRESENT 

which they had first purchased and intended for 
a Horticultural and Botanical Garden. The late 
Judge Story, of the Supreme Court of the 
United States, one of its most efficient pro- 
jectors, was many years President of the 
corporation, and with him, in its management, 
were associated several of the leading influential 
men of the city. The advantages of the plan 
they proposed met the decided approbation of an J 
enlightened public, and the demand for their lots 
became so frequent that the enterprise proved 
thoroughly successful. Taste soon lavished its 
designs upon the seventy acres first appropriated, 
and art and wealth enriched them until, in a few 
years, Mount Auburn became famous. Soon 
after rose Greenwood, at New York, Laurel Hill, 
at Philadelphia, and rapidly succeeding them, 
Mount Hope, at Rochester, Spring Grove, at 
Cincinnati, and, among numerous others in our 
northern cities, the first Forest Lawn, of Buffalo. 
Some of these were the property of associations, 
others of municipal authorities, and occasionally 
one was established by private enterprise. The 
propriety, the good taste, the sanitary influences 
of such appropriations for burial, have com- 
mended them to the favorable judgment of the 
people ; and, happily, they are increasing to such 
extent in numbers that, in all probability, before 
this century closes, the ornamental burial ground 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 87 

will become an indispensable appendage to every 
considerable village, or town, where people of 
culture reside, or aesthetic tastes prevail. 

We, of Buffalo, though somewhat tardy in the 
attainment of so complete and spacious a ceme- 
tery as is now demanded by the increasing 
population of the city, have, at length, accom- 
plished the work, with all the appliances of 
extent and availability which, for a long time, 
will be required. The original Forest Lawn, 
comprising about one-third of the present terri- 
tory, was the first enterprise of any magnitude 
here, and chiefly the work of a single individ- 
ual.* It was eligibly situated, conveniently 
arranged, and creditably managed; but it was 
not sufficient for the increasing necessities of 
our population, and the tenure by which it was 
held not altogether satisfactory to the public. 
The purchase of these new grounds, with widely 
extended capabilities, and the attachment thereto 
of the older cemetery, with its increasing adorn- 
ment, has given to the combined territory a 
breadth and opportunity wherein the choicest 
culture may be further displayed, and the high- 
est skill be exercised. 

Were I, of all cemeteries within my know- 
ledge, to point you to one taking precedence 

* Mr. Charles E. Clarke. 



88 THE PRESENT 

as a model, it would be that of Spring Grove, at 
Cincinnati. It lies five miles out of the city, 
and accessible, like ours, by carriage-road and 
street-railway. The grounds are based in a 
valley, running back on the hills, commanding 
a charming landscape, and comprise 410 acres. 
It has no greater natural advantages than Forest 
Lawn, yet of somewhat different character. It 
is owned by an association, and conducted on 
the mutual principle, like ours. Ten years ago, 
the association was poor in purse, and struggling 
to meet its current expenses, although it had for 
years been under the guidance of a professional 
landscape architect, and patronized by the chief 
wealth and taste of the city population. Like 
other leading cemeteries of our country, it was 
filled with petty iron enclosures, and other bar- 
barous inventions of a false taste, and huddled 
with grave-stones. Most fortunately for its suc- 
cess, a new and self-taught genius from abroad 
accidentally came to its relief — a man of humble 
pretension, but of marvellous endeavor. En- 
trusted with its superintendence, and guided by 
his genial taste, within the time of his adminis- 
tration, hundreds of those iron fences, with their 
forbidding gates and locks, have been voluntarily 
swept away by their proprietors ; the countless 
insecure head-stones, and various mural trifles, 
with the tangled hedges enclosing them, have 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 89 

disappeared ; the tortuous, narrow roads and 
dividing paths have been filled, and in their 
places broad undulations of green turf, stately 
avenues, and tasteful monuments, intermingled 
with noble trees, and clumps of shrubbery now 
meet the eye, conferring a grace and dignity 
which no cemetery in our country has yet 
equalled, — thus blending the elegance of a park 
with the pensive beauty of a burial-place. Nor 
should its financial success be overlooked. 
Under the new administration its current ex- 
penses have all been paid. One hundred and 
thirty acres additional to its previous two hun- 
dred and eighty, were purchased in the month 
of April last, for which $130,000 in cash were 
paid from its fund realized by the sale of lots, 
and $50,000 for an improvement fund still 
remains in its treasury; and this while there are 
in constant use more than a dozen other burial- 
grounds, belonging to different societies and 
establishments in and about the city — and the 
population of Cincinnati is but about twice that 
of Buffalo. A considerable part of our own 
lately purchased grounds have been blocked out 
for improvement by Mr. Strauch, the present 
architect of Spring Grove, and it only needs the 
co-operating influence of you, citizens of Buffalo, 
to make this, in the exercise of taste and art, 
12 



90 THE PRESENT 

equal to that. We confide in your liberality to 
aid us in consummating this high achievement. 

The contiguity of this ground to the city ; its 
readiness of approach; its amenity of surface; 
its woods, and grass, and hills, and dells ; its 
contrasts of rock and soil ; its lofty trees, and 
creeping vines ; its bubbling springs, and gentle 
stream, and tumbling waters, even in their own 
wildness, are attractive; and when, under the 
plastic guidance of a cunning hand, the grassy 
plateau shall be enlivened with flower and 
shrubbery ; the slopes and hill-tops wave in their 
leafy luxuriance of massy forest, or scattering- 
tree; the running stream expand into mimic 
lake, or glassy pool, with frequent monument, 
or lesser memorial, glinting among them, — it 
will become the admiration of all who love to 
look on natural beauty or artistic effort. 

Thirty years ago, a stranger from a young 
western city stood in the beautiful cemetery of 
Mount Auburn. It was the first ornamental 
burial-ground he had seen, and he took an entire 
day for the visit. He walked over the grounds, 
and threaded the avenues alone, enjoying his 
own thoughts, and indulging his own quiet 
. reflections. He read upon the newly erected 
monuments names associated with the early 
Pilgrims — the divines, the scholars, the patriots, 
the statesmen of New England — and what 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 9 1 

names were they, and what recollections did 
they call up! The Pilgrims did not sleep there: 
nor, through many generations of God-fearing 
service, did their sons and daughters sleep in 
any such field of graves. The scattered burial- 
grounds of city, and village, and battle-field, and 
the secluded country hamlets held their bones. 
But there rested the dust, and there were in- 
scribed the names of many of their later 
posterity, and all around were standing, and 
still arising, memorials to their services and 
virtues. Many of you have stood in that 
ground, or in other grounds alike memorable 
with the associations of the past, and, with that 
stranger in sympathy, you now share in the 
possession of a burial-place equally eligible, in 
this city of your homes. And here, although 
our history be briefer, and marked by achieve- 
ments less eventful than is written of the 
Pilgrims, yet quite as dear to us as to their 
successors, and to our children as to theirs, will 
be the ground wherein may repose our own 
remains, and over which are to stand the me- 
morials to perpetuate our names to coming 
generations. 

Nor, while Nature has laid with opulent hand 
this charming retreat, where taste and art may 
strive in their joint display of attainment, are 
other influences than those of outward adorn- 



92 THE PRESENT 

ment to be forgotten. The place, itself, is holy. 
A pure religion, a trusting faith, a decent 
morality, all consecrate it as hallowed ground. 
Happily, we believe in one God, and in His 
divine revelation to fallen humanity. Although 
a minor formula may briefly separate us in our 
modes of worship, life's journey past, we here 
meet in one common fellowship, where all strifes 
and animosities are composed, all contentions 
laid — and laid forever. The proud, and the 
humble ; the learned, and the unlearned ; the 
great, and the small ; the vain ones, high and 
elate with the world's prosperity, and they borne 
down with the world's adversity ; those devoted 
to God and humanity, and they devoted to 
mammon, — all will lie down together; and, 
although monumental inscription may tell the 
names and deeds of many, while the green turf 
and creeping wild-flower only will decorate the 
graves of others, the general Resurrection of all 
men will bring them to the same final Judgment. 
Not only is this a gathering place for the 
dead, but so, too, shall come here the living. 
Multitudes may come to enjoy the varied 
beauties of the spot, or read some fond memo- 
rial of the past. The gay, and the thoughtless 
— even the scoffer may come; but no heart, 
however obdurate, will enter this cemetery, and 
muse upon its graves, and look upon its monu- 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 93 

ments, and gaze upon its verdure, and breathe 
in its fragrance, and not relent at its own infirm- 
ities, — a better being when he goes out than 
when he came in, and, haply, better in the future. 
The voice of adoration and praise, as well as of 
weeping and sorrow, will be heard, and holy 
vows, and solemn prayer, and penitential sup- 
plication, will breathe along these walks, and 
mingle their subdued spirit with the whispering 
leaves. The mourner will be comforted with 
the bright assurances of the Gospel of Life, and 
a blessed immortality. The bereaved wife and 
husband, the stricken parent, the orphaned child, 
the attached friend, — all, will here disclose their 
sorrows. Age and infancy ; tottering infirmity, 
and robust manhood; hale matrons, and little 
children ; young men, and maidens, — the whole 
family of man, in age and condition, will come 
here to grieve, to commune, or to contemplate. 

Not alone for gentlest intercourse and kindly 
sympathy, will the living throng these avenues ; 
not alone will mourners come here to indulge 
their sorrows over the dust of those they loved, 
and tenderly smooth the turf that covers them ; 
but sterner hearts may learn a lesson. The 
devout man and Christian may muse in the 
solemnity of his own secret thoughts, and con- 
template the hour when, done with the duties 
and trials of earth, "this mortal shall put on 



94 THE PRESENT 

immortality, and death be swallowed up in 
victory !" The philosopher may find themes for 
the solution of his doubts and speculations, and 
anticipate the time when all his acquired wisdom 
shall be counted as " dust in the balance." The 
ambitious man and politician may read the story 
of those who, before him, have fretted their 
brief hour on the arena of civil turmoil and 
battle, and in bitterness exclaim that his own 
life struggles are only " sound and fury, signify- 
ing nothing." The rich man and powerful, even 
he who has grasped the rod of empire, may look 
on the silent monuments, and counting the time 
when himself must "join the innumerable cara- 
van" in their silent march to the sepulchre, 
confess that, at the surrender of all his acquisi- 
tion and authority, six feet of earth is room 
enough ! The poor and unfortunate may come, 
and, gazing on the checkered memorials scat- 
tered around him, in the composing spirit of 
resignation, rejoice that 

" Only the actions of the just 
Smell sweet and blossom in the dust." 

And the stranger from a far land may come, 
knowing nothing of the dead, nor sympathizing 
with the living, — ignorant, perchance, of our 
language, or history, — yet, amid the array of 
silent beauty and solemn testimonial which 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 95 

encompass him, he will honor the piety of those 
who thus cherish the memories of their dead, 
and invoke the gratitude of the living. 

A field of graves, simply, be it ever so ornate 
and costly, and tended with the most assiduous 
care, would not comprise the whole of what is 
intended in this appropriation. Divested, in its 
financial administration, of all personal emolu- 
ment, its surplus revenues will be devoted to the 
permanent enclosure, improvement, and decora- 
tion of the ground, and the preservation of the 
property within its boundaries. It is proposed 
to set apart eligible sites for the erection of 
monuments, on which to record remarkable 
events, and memorable services. The late re- 
bellion in our land has enacted a history the 
most eventful in results of any which has oc- 
curred in the annals of civil government. To 
the conquest of that rebellion our city and 
county have sent their heroes at a costly sacri- 
fice of blood and valor. It is becoming that the 
bravery and patriotism of those who have fallen 
should be inscribed on a monumental pile, and a 
place will be designated for that purpose. Ap- 
propriate grounds will be set apart for the uses 
of associations civic, social, patriotic, or eleemo- 
synary, and held in reserve as they may be 
required. 

It is contemplated, also, to provide, in a 



96 THE PRESENT 

wooded portion of the grounds, a receptacle for 
such remains of the distinguished chiefs and 
people of the neighboring Indian tribes as may 
be gathered from their obscure burial-places in 
our vicinity. We owe them that duty, and it 
is but just that we pay it. Their names and 
achievements live in our history, our romance, 
and song. Great men were some of them — 
good men were others — strong men were they 
all. Their memories should be perpetuated 
amid the scenes in which they acted, and not 
expire with the fading fortunes of their race. 
Through these woods their hunters ranged, and 
brought in their trophies of the chase. At our 
springs they slaked their simple thirst. Under 
these trees the Sagamores kindled their council 
fires, and around them held their deliberations. 
Along the stream which flows at our feet, and 
bearing the name of an honored chieftain,^ they 
pitched their tents, and ate their food, and held 
their sports, and laid down to rest. They loved 
the land, for they thought it their own, and in 
bitterness did they yield it to the stronger neces- 
sities of our land-absorbing race. These tribes 
have always held in veneration the remains of 
their dead. Their solicitude for the preservation 
of their graves has oftentimes been witnessed in 

*John Ken-jock-e-ta, who lived many years on its banks. 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 97 

their negotiations with our Government for the 
cession of their soil, and an eloquent and touch- 
ing appeal has recently been made to us by a 
well known chief* of the Seneca Nation, to re- 
ceive the dust of their distinguished dead, and 
give them sepulture in these grounds ; — and that 
appeal we intend to heed. Mary Jemison, (the 
White Woman,) must no longer lie in a waste 
corner of a pasture field, nor her tomb-stone be 
chipped by the hands of vandal relic hunters. 
The bones of the great Sa-ga-ya-wat-ha, (Red 
Jacket,) must be rescued from the strong box 
in which they are deposited in a private dwelling 
at Cattaraugus, and Little-Billy, Destroy-Town, 
Big-Kettle, and other venerated relics, must take 
their place under these hallowed shades. 

Rich in the breadth of its own native vegeta- 
tion, this kindly soil will give nurture to all the 
rarer hardy plants of exotic growth which the 
fancy of its proprietors may introduce. A 
wider variety, and a nobler growth of forest 
trees, is seldom found in any space of equal 
magnitude ; and in the humbler domain of 
shrub, and plant, and flower, the botanist may 
range at will, and cull, in multitudinous variety, 
the choicest specimens. To complete these rare 

* Nathaniel T. Strong, (Yo-non-de-oh,) in his paper on the life of 

Red Jacket, read before "The Young Men's Christian Union," Buffalo, 

1864. 

13 



98 THE PRESENT 

accessories, it is designed to add the dignity of 
a Park to the graces of a Landscape Garden. 
We have done, I trust forever, with the rude 
depositories of the past — their broken walls, 
their miscellaneous graves, their bramble-grown 
tumuli, their crumbling memorials. Repulsive 
to the living, they add but gloom to the memo- 
ries of the dead. But a well-arranged ground, 
extensive in area, varied in natural feature, 
dressed in the habilaments of art, and breathing 
throughout the atmosphere of culture and refine- 
ment, is, in itself, an acquisition of priceless 
value to every heart possessing a throb above 
the grosser sensualities of life. 

Philosophers, (so self-styled,) Communists, and 
Reformers of various order, have sought to ob- 
literate the sacred ties of family connexion for 
their better plan of miscellaneous association in 
life; but the truer instinct of the Christian heart 
revolts at the sacrilege, and even in death clings, 
in its own innate tenderness, to a companionship 
with those it loved in the grave. " Bury me 
with my fathers !" said dying Israel to his assem- 
bled sons. " And his sons did unto him as he 
commanded them." 

The Family Burial Ground ! There is a 
quickening magic in the name. As stood the 
Patriarchs, four thousand years ago, before their 
dead in the field of Mamre, so stand we before 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 99 

our dead here. It is a touching thought that 
the remains of those with whom we have shared 
the dearest communion of our lives, may sleep 
beneath the turf made sacred by our care. We 
love the little piece of earth that holds them in 
its own separate fold ; and, awaiting God's good 
time, — without whose notice not even the spar- 
row falleth, — we take our place beside them as 
one going to a welcome rest, there to sleep until 
the last great day shall raise us into diviner 
being, and bring us face and face together. 

We hope, at some not distant day, to erect 
within these enclosures a temple dedicated to 
the obsequies of the dead, and the service of the 
living God. Such a structure is appropriate to 
the place. It comports with the solemnity, the 
dignity of the funeral occasion. In such a 
building, and for such a purpose, all varieties of 
faith, all devout believers, may each in their own 
way, according to conscience and duty, lay their 
sacrifices and supplications on a common altar. 
The realm of Death recognizes no supreme pre- 
rogative. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to 
dust, is the inexorable mandate of his presence. 

We may not, friends and associates in this 
pious undertaking ! within the brief space of our 
own lives, provide for all the needs which a place 
like this should supply. Our children, even our 
children's children, may find bequeathed to them 



IOO THE PRESENT 

a duty — and, we trust, a grateful one — to com- 
plete what our own earnest endeavors have 
begun. We shall leave it for those who succeed 
us to finish, conscious that their reverence for 
the motives and labors of their sires will con- 
tinue in them the spirit which has actuated us 
in providing for their decent interment in com- 
mon with our own. 

To the outside world, the ungodly, the profane, 
— if such there be, who question the propriety 
of our action, — we owe no apology, no justifi- 
cation. They may deride our efforts ; a cold 
and blank infidelity may look with apathy on 
our endeavors to give sanctity and security to 
the dead. They may say, " No matter what 
becomes of the body when life has once gone 
out ; it is as well in one place as another." They 
may tell us of the trillions and the centrillions 
of humanity, who by fire have passed into air, 
or shrunk into ashes ; of those gone down into 
the depths of the sea ; of the millions still lying 
beneath the pyramids, in the catacombs of cities 
past and present, and the scattered known and 
unknown mausolea of the Pagan East ; of other 
millions mouldering in the countless burial- 
grounds, and amid the wastes and deserts of the 
whole broad universe ; of the myriads of human 
bones which have been gathered and ground into 
phosphates and sown broadcast to fertilize the 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 10 1 

soil—and with triumphant display of learning 
and chemistry, gibe at our humble rites of sep- 
ulture. Be it so. They tell us no new thing. 
But, beyond others, what know these Sadducees ? 
As Time moves, or Eternity waits, so surely will 
God's purposes be fulfilled. The same miracu- 
lous Power which breathed man into life, and 
gave him his daily accretion of mind and sub- 
stance, may, and will, in His own appointed 
time, from the uttermost ends of the earth and 
sea, upheaving and rending every impediment, 
renew those wasted, bodies. That "multitude 
which no man can number" will assemble at 
the last great day, when " the heavens shall be 
rolled together as a scroll," and which, in His 
own dread presence, will herald forth the out- 
start of eternity ! In our own simple faith, we 
point to Joseph of Arimathea, who begged the 
body of his crucified Lord, for sepulture in his 
own rock-hewn tomb, in testimony that the 
grave is a holy place ; and as angels rolled away 
the stone for that sublime Resurrection, so, in 
humility, may we hope that at the great arising 
of all men to judgment, angels may here attend 
to welcome the just to their final reward. 

Friends, associates — all who cherish the mem- 
ories of your dead! as in reverence you walk 
beneath the majestic shadow of these groves — 
" first temples " of the Almighty— as you admire 



102 THE PRESENT 

the symmetry of the varied handiwork of nature 
and art that surround you ; as you venerate the 
records of the just and good who have gone 
before you, keep this place secure from profana- 
tion. While making it the rest of the departed, 
preserve it as a chosen resort for the living. 
Dearest of all ! mothers — wives — sisters — daugh- 
ters ! we commend to your pious care, to your 
tender affection, this sacred spot. Consecrate it 
by your gentle presence ; tread lightly on its 
turf; tend its flowers with careful hand, and 
breath upon it the holy sympathies of the 
Marys at the Sepulchre ! Men and women of 
Buffalo! we commit this City of the Dead to 
the solemn keeping of you, and those who fol- 
low you, not now alone, but for all time! 

Next was sung, by the Continentals, the fol- 
lowing Hymn, composed for the occasion by Mr. 
Anson G. Chester, and set to music by Mr. J. R. 
Blodgett : 

These quiet acres, with this solemn grove, 

These slopes, where many a blossom lifts its head, 
These nooks, where pipes the thrush and moans the^dove — 

We give them to the dead. 

Here shall repose the matron and the maid, 

The infant and the father side by side ; 
And here, in holy faith and trust, be laid 

The grandsire and the bride. 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. IO3 

Here shall the heart its choicest incense burn, 

And here the fairest, rarest flowers shall bloom ; 
For Memory loves to twine the funeral urn 

And beautify the tomb. 

O, when in such a heavenly spot as this 

Our wearied bodies, undisturbed, may lie, 
Death holds for us the jeweled cup of bliss, 

And it is good to die. 

In Thy Great Name this place we consecrate, 

O God triune— the Father, Spirit, Word ; 
Sweet be their sleep who here shall calmly wait 

The summons of the Lord ! 

Succeeding the Hymn, Rev. Grosvenor W. 
Heacock, D. D., of the Lafayette Street Church, 
delivered the following 

ADDRESS. 



The homes of our dead should give proofs of 
the same thoughtful tenderness and the same 
pleasing taste which adorn the homes of the 
living. The grave demands this tender and 
loving care more than almost anything on earth. 
These sacred places are not indeed to be trodden 
by the noisy feet of business or of pleasure, but 
while joy should never enter these precincts, 
unchastened sorrow should never leave them 
uncomforted. All here should breathe of the 
gentlest, purest, and most tender remembrance. 
There should be nothing gloomy, repulsive or 



104 THE PRESENT 

forsaken about these dwellings of the dead. 
Not only does affection teach us this, but nature 
and religion alike instruct us thus to cast over 
the nakedness and dishonors of the grave earth's 
robe of emerald and its garniture of flowers, till 
that great morning comes which shall re-clothe 
that nakedness and redress those dishonors. 
We, to-day, wake the echoes of this quiet retreat 
by the tread of this vast concourse and the 
words of these appropriate and impressive ser- 
vices ; but it is usually to be the realm of repose 
and stillness, broken only by the solemn requiem 
— dust to dust — the stifled sob of sorrow or the 
low prayer which supplicates the Divine sym- 
pathy, and succor for those who come here to 
drink life's bitterest cup. 

We choose these sequestered places for our 
dead because the silence, the seclusion, and the 
shade all speak of calmness, quietude, and un- 
disturbed rest. The growing city can never 
encroach on these retired and consecrated en- 
closures. Our own thoughts will be here 
soothed and tranquilized by the sweet stillness, 
the undeserted solitude which is all around us. 
Here, to us, "the uproar, the tumult, and the 
fever of life " will be often suspended — a " se- 
cret respite granted " from its burdens — " a 
ceasing" from mortal cares — "a resting" from 
human labors. Into what voiceless and holy 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. IO5 

silence breaks the living wave on this shore! 
The spirit returns to God, and the body, what- 
ever ills and sufferings it may have borne in life, 
sinks here into perfect and painless sleep. 

We adorn these grounds to associate images 
of beauty, veneration and love, with all our 
thoughts of the dead, and in proof that death 
does not destroy, but rather sanctifies the affec- 
tions of our human hearts. Memory, love, and 
hope, hold triple watch and ward around these 
graves till the stars come to relieve the vigil, 
till night or winter wraps the heaving turf from 
sight. With the sun, and spring time they re- 
turn to guard and keep the spot as days and 

years go on. 

But along these shadowed aisles, not alone the 
private memorials of household affection are to 
be placed. Monuments to public worth and 
virtue will here be reared. Here the storied 
shaft should rise, crowned with the oak wreath, 
and decorated with the emblazonry of arms, to 
tell— 

" How sleep the brave who sink to rest, 

With all their country's wishes blest ;" 

****** * 

" There honor comes— a pilgrim gray- 
To bless the turf that wraps their clay ; 
And freedom shall a while repair 
To dwell a weeping hermit there." 
14 



IQ 6 THE PRESENT 



All over the battle-fields of the rebellion, lie 
the bones of those who died, that, in the simple 
yet eloquent language of another, « the Nation 
might live." From among us many of these 
went out never to return. Will our debt of 
obligation to these dead heroes be even suitably 
acknowledged—it can never be paid— until from 
some of these natural mounds there shall rise a 
lofty pinnacle of enduring stone to commemo- 
rate their supreme devotion to their country? 

On some other, and neighboring elevation, 
there should be reared— tall, graceful, imposing! 
crowned with the ribbed hat and silent trumpet 
—a noble column, to commemorate those who, 
starting at the wild alarm of midnight fire, have 
perished, or may perish, in brave conflict with 
the march of all-devouring flames. Here, too, 
those great orders and fraternities, akin to' that 
whose venerable insignia I see now before me, 
are invited to rear their monumental tablets to 
distinguished and honored members of their 
brotherhood, and, perhaps, beneath the shadow 
of the pile, to reserve a quiet grave for some 
stranger brother. In one word, we dedicate this 
ground, not only to the loved, but also' to the 
noble and the good. Philanthropy, piety, and 
patriotism, are here invited to honor with fitting 
memorial, any who have done well for God, their 
country, or their kind. 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. l&J 

Thus let this city of the dead teach us, in its 
calm stillness, by its lettered stone, its mute 
marble lips, those lessons of love, duty, and 
nobleness, which we, alas! too much forget, in 
the tumult of the living city. Here let the 
citizen, the statesman, the patriot, the Christian, 
learn how willingly the world forgets the evil 
of our lives ; how generously it remembers our 
imperfect good; and that in the household, the 
community, and the State, none need to live 
unloved— to die unhonored, or unwept. 

Next followed an Address, in the German 
language, by Rev. Otto Burger, of St. Paul's 
(German) Church : 

(Sine crufte geier W una l)ier terfammelt, btefen Drt jum 9iuf)epla£ 
ter Sottctt em$un>ctl)en, unt wenn wit tag 9hufa>n in ten 2£ipfetn 
&ttnt*rtj^tifler (Sicken \)'6xm, fo fdjetnt eS un$, aU ob ©dfter Pfternt 
fyrad)en : — 

2Bte ruf)t ftc^S fit£ tin fatten, 
3n ein(am [tiller Sftul/ ! 
UmfajH »ow tat ter Siebe 
®d)tie£t man bie Slugen #x, 
Unt in tm ftillen Xraumen 
©teiflt auf t>e^ SicWingS ©etjl, 
2)er una, ben a,an$ SSerwatften, 
2)tc $afotc be3 griebcnS retcfyt — 

3a einm ©iea, errinam tofe »er lob unb ©rab an btefer ©tfitte 
berSmoefuns, bm <Sie 3 itber tie <Ber S anaJid)feit. 3fr ni*t btefer .Drt 
ter leknbisfte SeroeiS bafiir? 98or wcnigen SKonben, ba brangten We 



IOS THE PRESENT 

3Jfcnfi$en fid) t>tcv, cut gfeji ber gfreube unb bed ©efangeg umrb fyicr ge* 
fctcvt, foflig ftangen bic ftctmat&Itdjcn Sieber, frofyeS i'adjcn unb ©clerj 
belufttgte bic Xljcilncfymcr, unb ctn Sauc^en, mte ntc cd bicfcr Drt ge* 
1)01% ftiegauf cuts tattfcnb $c()lcn, atg felofta,cfd)affcnc ©terne bte'-Jtoctyt 
jttm Sage wanbetten; bocjj anberd tft cd fycutc; cine crnftc ©tfmnrang 
()at bcr 9lnmcfcnbcn fid; beiftft^tigt ; »o fonft bcr grettbe fid; bcr oicrk 
lid;e ^ftgab, ba tft tit ticfed ©c&tretgen 2Ufci? gcfyitllt, jeber empftnbet ed: 
bit ftcl;cft am 9htl;cplai3 bcr Xobtcit; ctn l;cU'gcr <2d;attcr brt'ngt turd; 
bod ©ebein, unb mft 2M;mut(; gebenfett wix bcr geltebten (£utfd;lafcncn ; 
ftc, on bencn unfer #erj t'm Men \)in$, mad;en, nad;bem (tc bier rul;cn, 
uttS biefe ©tatte fo inciter. 2tkr nid;t nur SGefymuti; etgreift und Innm 
Stnbltcf fo ttteter ©rakr unb btcfed Sftonumcntcd bev 33ergftnglt$fett, 
fonbern ami; l;cilia,c grettbe fd;wcllt ttnfcvc 33rttft, benn wtr biirfen frol; 
f;icrfprea;cn: „Dcr Xob tft 9erf<$lungen in bem©teg" unb audkcd;cn in 
ben <2ic$edruf: 

SBctnt nid;t, ntcin <2rti5fer lebt ! 
#od; »om ftnflcrn Grbcnftauk 
#cll empor bic #offmmg fd;wcbt 
Unb bev £tmntetdl;clb, bcr ©lank; 
3a, bie ero'gc Sick fpricfyt : 
$inb bed Satcrd, jittrc nitytl— 

3)ied fci bic 3nfa;rift bed £>enfmaled, bod wix l;cutc totifym, unb 
fo oft ttur und f>ter jufantmcnft'nbcn, fci cd, bop mon (Eincd bcr Unfri- 
gen begrabt obcr und felbft jur 9ittl;c bcttct, fo miJge ftctd bcr ©cbaufc 
bic InntcrMcibcubcn crl;ekn, bop nod; miifycyollcm, febmcrem £aa,civ<crfc 
ber #crr bic ©cinen cublid; jur cttna,cn 9htl;c, jttr nnif;rctt £>cintatl; ruft, 
unb bap bonn in bcrfelbcn ctn fro!;cd 2Siebcrfcl;cn unfer fyarrt burd; 
3efu e^rifti ©nabc. 

Then was offered a Prayer, by Rev. J. 
H. Knowles, of Grace (Methodist Episcopal) 
Church, as follows : 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. i O 

O, God, Father and Preserver of all mankind, 
we approach thee in the name of our Lord and 
Savior, humbly invoking the gracious aid of 
thy Holy Spirit. Thou knowest our frame, and 
rememberest that we are dust, that all flesh is 
as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower 
of grass. Yet we do rejoice that Thy glory is 
revealed in the face of Jesus Christ, and that 
life and immortality are brought to light 
through the Gospel. We bless Thee that in 
the scheme of redemption Jesus took part of 
flesh and blood, that through death He might 
destroy him that had the power of death, and 
deliver them who, through fear of death, were 
all their life-time subject to bondage. Thanks 
be to God which giveth us the victory through 
our Lord Jesus Christ. We come to consecrate 
this sacred enclosure as the final resting-place 
of the precious dead. Hear us, O God of Isaac 
and Jacob, and acknowledge the work of our 
hands. Bless, we pray Thee, those who have 
conceived and have thus far completed this 
noble design. Whenever the voice of lamenta- 
tion shall shall be lifted within these hallowed 
precincts— parents mourning for children, and 
children* for parents; brothers for sisters, and 
sisters for brothers ; husband for wife, and wife 
for husband— do Thou then appear, O blessed 
Savior, once thyself a man of sorrows and 



HO THE PRESENT 

acquainted with grief. Here may the eye of 
faith discern the things which are not seen ; here 
may the heart feed upon the inspired Word and 
upon the joyful hope of heavenly recognition. 
May every flower and shrub, planted here by 
the hand of love, raise the drooping heart to 
that home where 



where 



Everlasting spring abides, 
And never-withering flowers ;" 



" Sickness and sorrow, pain and death, 
Are felt and feared no more." 



May no rude footstep profane this holy spot ; 
no battle sound break upon this quiet air. May 
every name here inscribed upon decaying marble 
be recorded in the Lamb's Book of Life ; and 
when Thou callest the myriads of the earth and 
sea to rise in the resurrection morning, may all 
those who shall here find sepulture awake in 
Thy likeness. And the praise shall be unto 
Thee, O God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 
forever. Amen. 

Rev. J. Hazard Hartzell, of the Church of the 
Messiah, (Universalist,) next read from the 
metrical paraphrase of the Hundredth Psalm, 
and the Doxology : 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. I I I 

" Before Jehovah's awful Throne 
Ye nations ! bow with sacred joy, 
Know that the Lord is God alone ; 
He can create, and He destroy. 

" We are His people, we His care, 

Our souls, and all our mortal frame ; 
What lasting honors shall we rear, 
Almighty Father ! to Thy name ?" 

" Praise God from whom all blessings flow ; 
Praise Him all creatures here below ; 
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host ; 
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." 

These words were sung by the whole assem- 
bly, standing, to the tune of "Old Hundred," 
with grand effect. 

A Benediction, by Rev. Otto Burger, closed 
the services. 



The dedicatory services on the platform being 
concluded, the concourse now followed the 
Masonic Orders to the wooded mound, a few 
rods distant, to witness the ceremony of laying 
the Memorial Stone, whereon is to stand the 
column to commemorate the event of the day. 
The following extracts from the account of the 
proceedings, as published in the city newspapers, 
are recorded here, as being of deep interest to 
those who took part in, or witnessed the im- 



j j 2 THE PRESENT 

posing ceremony. The Fraternity took their 
positions in a semi-circle on the front and ends, 
at the base of the mound, the audience filling 
the space in the rear. The chief officers then 
assembled in order around the proposed Monu- 
ment, when Grand Master, C. J. Fox, read the 
following Introductory Address : 

Brethren: From time immemorial, it has 
been customary, in civilized communities, to 
invite the Fraternity of Free and Accepted 
Masons to assist in the erection of public 
buildings and structures commemorative of 
worthy objects, and to inaugurate such enter- 
prises by ceremonies peculiar to the Craft. 

In conformity with that custom, and in com- 
pliance with an invitation from the Trustees of 
the Cemetery, we are assembled here to-day to 
plant, in Masonic form, the foundation-stone of 
a Monument which is to be here erected as a 
Memorial of the Dedication of these grounds as 

a burial place. 

The beautiful and impressive Dedicatory 
service has been performed in our. presence, 
and, with the surroundings of the time and 
the place, have awakened in our minds salutary 
reflections on the solemn and certain fate that 
awaits us. Before another year shall have 
passed away some, and, ere long, all within the 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. I 1 3 

sound of my voice, may be summoned to the 
silent land, and be borne hither by friendly 
hands and loving hearts, to their final resting- 
place on Earth, there to await, in the " Middle 
Chamber of the Celestial Temple," the resur- 
rection of the dead. And whether death shall 
meet us when the sun of our life in manhood 
shines in meridian splendor, or when in old age 
it softly gilds the western sky as it sets to rest, 
if we have been true to the teachings of Free- 
Masonry, we need not fear the conflict, but 
when the S. A. O. T. U. sends his angel to us 
with the scroll of death, will look upon it as 
an " act of mercy, to prevent many sins and 
many calamities of a longer life ; for this at 
least man gets by death, that his calamities are 
not immortal. To bear grief honorably and 
temperately, and to die willingly and nobly, 
are the duties of a good man and true Mason. 
Let us hope that the petty strifes and bickerings, 
the jealousies and heart burnings, the small 
triumphs and mean advantages we have gained 
shall not survive us, but rather the noble 
thoughts, the words of truth, the works of mercy 
and justice, that ennoble and light up the exist- 
ence of every honest man, however humble, 
will live for good when his body is mouldering 
in its parent dust." 

15 



I 14 THE PRESENT 

" Let us labor, then, faithfully and reverently 
in our several vocations, true to all our duties 
to God and man, so that when we are called to 
close our earthly labors, we may be prepared for 
admission to the grand and solemn mysteries 
of the better land." 

The usual ceremonies for such occasions then 
followed, in which Prayer, and solemn Music 
were interspersed, according to the rituals and 
formula of the Order, with appropriateness and 
effect. The base of the future Monument had 
already been laid, and a cavity sunk into its 
surface to receive the copper box, in which were 
enclosed sundry documentary records. The in- 
scription on the lid of the box having been read 
by the proper officer, it was duly deposited in its 
place. The granite cap-stone, on which had 
been cut appropriate inscriptions, with the ac- 
customed offerings of "corn, and wine, and oil," 
was then slowly and carefully lowered, and 
cemented upon the base, under the superin- 
tendence of the " Principal Architect," Mr. John 
Crawford, who prepared and fitted the stones. 

In the box were the following: 

DEPOSITED BY THE MASONS. 

A List of the Grand Lodge Officers for 1 866. 
Constitution and General Regulations of the Grand Lodge. 
Transactions of Grand Lodge for 1865. 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 115 

A copy of the By-laws, with a list of the Officers and Mem- 
bers of the following, viz : 

Lodge. No. 

Hiram, 105 

Concordia, ........ 143 

Erie, 161 

Washington, 240 

Parish, 292 

Modestia, 340 

Queen City, 358 

Lodge of the Ancient Landmarks, . . . 441 

De Molay, 498 

Buffalo Chapter, 71 

Keystone Chapter, 163 

Buffalo Council, . . . . . . 17 

Keystone Council, 21 

Lake Erie Commandery, ..... 20 
Hugh De Payen Commandery, ... 30 

Masonic Eclectic. 

Masonic Tidings. 

Free Mason's Monitor, 1866. 

National Free Mason. 

Voice of Masonry. 

Free Mason's Monitor, 1805. 

Beauties of Free Masonry, 18 16. 

Masonic Trowel. 

DEPOSITED BY THE TRUSTEES OF FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 

The Holy Bible. 

Constitution, By-laws, and List of Officers. 
Dedication Service, by Bishop Coxe. 
Historical Sketch, by O. G. Steele. 
Ode, written by Dr. J. C. Lord. 
Address, by Lewis F. Allen. 
Hymn, by Anson G. Chester. 
Order of Exercises. 



I 1 6 THE PRESENT 

Thomas' City Directory, 1866. 

U. S. Currency and Coins. 

Report of Committee of Arrangements. 

Buffalo Daily Papers. 

INSCRIPTION ON THE BOX OF DEPOSITS. 

This Stone was laid with Masonic honors, as a Memorial of 
the Dedication of Forest Lawn Cemetery, by the Right Wor- 
shipful Christopher G. Fox, D. D. G. M. 22d Masonic District 
of the State of New York, on the 28th day of September, A. L. 
5866, A. D. 1866. Most Worshipful Robert D. Holmes, Grand 
Master of Masons. 

The Masonic exercises ended, a Benedic- 
tion was pronounced by the Chaplain, and the 
work of the afternoon concluded. The sun of 
a delightfully bland autumnal day had thrown 
the shadows of the surrounding trees far aslant 
on the turf now trodden by the feet of gratified 
thousands, who, in due order, left the grounds 
to their wonted stillness, and solemn keeping. 
Thus, in becoming dignity, and with emphatic 
ceremonial, was dedicated to the repose of the 
Dead — and ever, as we trust, to be perpetuated 
to its holy purpose, — the sacred Cemetery of 
Forest Lawn. 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 117 



FOREST LAWN. 



Gathered, this bright autumnal day, 
Beneath these trees of lofty shade, 

To dedicate this peaceful home — 

And sacred — where our dead are laid ; 

May angel sentinels, we pray, 

Protect it ever, day by day. 

The "still small voice" of God is heard 
In whispering breezes lingering here ; 

These precious mounds enforce a truth 
Addressed to every listening ear. 

Gently this hallowed ground we tread, 

Thus consecrated to the dead. 

'Mid mossy dells, where streamlets wind, 
And trees whose branches intertwine : 

Where summer clouds flit o'er the graves, 

And lights from Heaven look down and shine 

Where daisies bloom and scent the air, — 

Fit place of rest ; — Oh, lay us there ! 

Here rest the weary ones of earth, 

Kindred and friends who shared our love ; 

Not they, Death's pris'ners will remain, 
For Hope undying points above. 

Around, the birds their requiems sing, 

Fair shrubs arise, and flowerets spring. 

Here, we their looks and words recall — 
Sweet memories that never sleep ; 

Here fond affections oft resort, 
And ever loving vigils keep ; 

While sighs are breathed, and tears are shed, 

As tributes to our sleeping dead. 



Il8 THE PRESENT 

These sculptured shafts that rise so fair, 
Are not memorials of gloom, 

But point to Heaven's eternal sky, 
And cheer the darkness of the tomb ; 

On them let immortelles be laid, 

To light the bed that Death has made ! 

Home of the dead ! we yield to thee — 
Dust unto dust — our wasting clay ; 

Life's toils all ended, here we wait 
'Till the great resurrection day, 

When Death's domain will disappear, 

And Christ shall call each sleeper here ! 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



THE GROUNDS. 

The Trustees having this enterprise in charge, 
in giving to the citizens of Buffalo this record 
of their labors, deem it a fitting occasion to offer 
a few remarks, illustrating their general plan 
for the improvement of the Cemetery grounds, 
and to add some suggestions for the guidance 
of lot owners, in furtherance of the same object. 

It will not be denied that in many particulars, 
such as the style, kind, and relative position of 
monuments; the laying out, adornment and 
character of the boundary lines of lots, and their 
floral and arboreal decoration, individual fancies 
should be subordinate to a general plan, and 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. I 1 9 

subject to certain rules designed to secure har- 
mony and uniformity, and exclude all such 
manifest violations of good taste as often sadly 
mar our places of sepulture. They feel that it 
will only be necessary to state this general plan, 
and to mention a few of the arguments in sup- 
port of the rules which have been established, 
to secure the assent and hearty co-operation of 
all who feel an interest or ambition in the suc- 
cess and prosperity of the enterprise. 

It was considered of the first importance to 
locate this Cemetery where it would enjoy a 
permanent seclusion ; where the expenditure of 
taste and money would become a heritage for 
all coming time ; where the desecrating tenden- 
cies of modern commercial growth should never 
violate its sanctity, or the encroaching waves of 
a noisy, restless city life, disturb its repose. 

The grounds now embraced by " Forest 
Lawn " seem to fulfill these conditions, without 
being at too great a distance from the paved 
thoroughfares of the city. 

We know, that aside from our noble Lake and 
River, the suburbs of Buffalo are somewhat defi- 
cient in variety of natural scenery, the area em- 
braced by the Cemetery grounds being a marked 
exception. Upon its few acres, nature has cer- 
tainly lavished a remarkable wealth and diversity 
of rural beauty. In placing them, therefore, in 



120 THE PRESENT 

the hands of our fellow citizens, we cannot 
refrain from urging a wise and careful use of 
these bounteous gifts. We cannot with too 
great caution intrude Art upon Nature. We 
should always come into her presence with 
uncovered head and modest mien. Over this 
spot, thus physically endowed, has the hand of 
Religion been raised in benediction and conse. 
cration. No one who witnessed our impressive 
dedicatory services, will soon forget that lovely 
autumn afternoon, when some of us turned 
aside for a brief hour from secular pursuits, 
and amid the falling of the leaf, and all those 
suggestive preparations of Nature to signalize 
her own obsequies, gave a thought to the grave 
and its surroundings. The always revered quiet 
of the tomb thus gained additional sanctity. 
The crowded emblems of mortality, under the 
aegis of Religion, have thus become no longer 
the records of a few perished years, but point 
beyond them to a Hope, and an Eternity. 

MONUMENTS. 

Our monuments should be simple and grace- 
ful ; they should symbolize the grandeur and 
solemnity of the change they are designed to 
commemorate. All rectangular slabs, % form of 
tombstone now so much in vogue, should be 
utterly banished from our grounds. Let the use 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 121 

of such uncouth sign-boards be confined to the 
cities of the living, not intruded here, to mar 
the rounded grace of nature. On the other 
hand, " Anything savoring of fashionable pret- 
tiness, any far-fetched conceits, or tortured 
allegories, jar upon the feelings of every well- 
regulated mind, and excite ideas the very 
opposite to those of sympathy and tenderness." 
There is a golden mean between the extremes 
of fanatical gloom and conceited affectation, 
which we should seek to attain, and although 
it is a delicate office to dictate to personal taste 
upon such a subject, still, as all the lot owners 
have a common interest in the grounds, and in 
preserving and adding to their beauty, the plan 
of every monument proposed to be erected 
should be within the rules of good taste. An 
ill-conceived or incongruous structure, however 
costly, would tend to mar much of surrounding 
beauty. 

The frosts of our northern climate are so 
destructive, that great care is necessary, not 
only in selecting the forms, but in laying the 
foundations, of monuments. Nothing adds 
more to the neglected aspect of many grave- 
yards than crumbling vaults, flanked by columns 
and slabs leaning in every direction. To avoid 
such results, every structure should be composed 
of few pieces, supported by solid, substantial 

16 



122 THE PRESENT 

bases. The pyramid, and its more graceful 
modification, the obelisk, are types of archi- 
tectural durability, and should be followed so 
far as to furnish a broad and solid support. 
All foundations should therefore be constructed 
under the immediate direction of the associa- 
tion. None but of prescribed depth and material 
should be allowed, We cannot, perhaps, better 
exhibit the importance of this rule, than by 
quoting the language of the author of " Rural 
Cemeteries of America:" "The finest of models 
and choicest of materials will avail but little, 
unless the foundation and erection be made with 
care. The monument should rest upon a bed 
of concrete, and be below the action of frost and 
grave-digger." 

We will add a word against crowding monu- 
ments on the same lot, and recommend the plan 
adopted in the Spring Grove Cemetery, of Cin- 
cinnati. There, the single shaft or column 
prevails, as the central ornament, around which 
the graves are arranged, each occupant having 
an appropriate record upon the common pedestal. 
This appropriately symbolizes the unity and con- 
sanguinity of the dust resting beneath. 

LOT ENCLOSURES. 

The custom of enclosing graves with cum- 
brous fences of wood, or iron, probably arose 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 1 23 

from the necessity that compelled our ancestors 
to protect their dead against the ravages of wild 
beasts. It has, unhappily, outlived its origin. 
The graceful curves into which Nature and Art 
alike love to mould the surface, are not possible 
when the ground is permitted to be thus 

" Cut up from the fellowship of verdure," 

and any successful attempt to beautify the land- 
scape is quite out of the question. The amount 
annually required to keep these useless barriers 
in repair, can be applied to much better uses. 
" Why," says Washington Irving, " should we 
thus seek to clothe Death with unnecessary 
terrors, and spread horrors around the tomb 
of those we love? The grave should be sur- 
rounded with every thing that might insure 
tenderness and veneration. Can this be done 
by having burial lots enclosed with stone posts, 
iron bars, and chains, the sight of which is 
repulsive in the extreme, as it conveys the idea 
of rudeness and confinement? The ancients 
knew nothing of sacred enclosures, but they 
knew of sacred groves of trees ; they saw beauty 
and grandeur in a massive monument, but not 
in an iron fence around their groves ; they knew 
how to produce variety, but abstained from 
destroying it by excess." 

The plan of the Trustees is a gradual elimi- 
nation of all subordinate enclosures from the 



124 THE PRESENT 

earlier occupied portion of the Cemetery, with 
the undergrowth of rubbish that their presence 
has encouraged, and a total prohibition, in all 
the grounds, of their erection in future. The 
extent of the lots will be more appropriately 
defined by stone posts, placed at the corners, 
nearly level with the surface. 

TREES AND SHRUBBERY ON PRIVATE LOTS. 

From the earliest times, custom appears to 
have selected and set apart certain trees, shrubs, 
and flowers, as appropriate for sepulchral adorn- 
ment. Evergreens of all classes, whose perennial 
verdure mitigates the bleak desolation of winter, 
and whose sombre hues relieve the lighter 
summer foliage ; the sighing larch, " the willow, 
trailing low its boughs to hide the gleaming 
marble," rue, rosemary, and pansies, the yew, 
" the gadding woodbine," and ancient ivy, are 
already embalmed in funereal and grave-yard 
literature, and in English church-yards each has 
its appropriate legend. 

We see no reason why any tree or plant, that 
possesses grace of outline, or adds^ to the 
effective beauty of a landscape, should not as 
well contribute to the adornment of a Rural 
Cemetery, as to the beauty of our parks, or 
lawns. The shade of massive forest trees 
should always be most welcome in such a place. 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 1 25 

Of these we happily have an abundance. It is 
important that, in adding to what Nature has 
already done in this direction, the various forms 
should be so grouped, and shades and colors so 
combined, as to produce the most pleasing effect. 
Where divers tastes are employed in sur- 
rounding the tomb with the living evidences 
of affection, there is danger of much incon- 
gruity. It would seem almost imperative, that 
improvements of this kind should be subject to 
the constant oversight and direction of a land- 
scape gardener. It certainly should be the aim 
of every one, in embellishing their lots with 
trees and shrubbery, to conform to such rules 
as will produce the best possible effect. There 
is a marked tendency to over-crowd lots with a 
miscellaneous mass of verdure, against which 
we would most earnestly remonstrate. A close 
cut, velvety turf, is an important element of 
beauty in a cemetery, as everywhere else, and 
often far more ornamental than more pretentious 
verdure. 

No one, we think, can reasonably complain 
that in all this we are disposed to be too critical ; 
or affirm that the most sensitive regard for 
beauty, neatness, taste, and symmetry, is un- 
seemly, when exercised upon the surroundings 
of the tomb. Surely, in the growth of flowers 
and verdure, we find most appropriately symbol- 



126 THE PRESENT 

ized, that mysterious principle of vitality that 
sleeps within the dust of dead generations. 
The insensate clod, seemingly devoid of life, as 
soon as the sun penetrates the hidden germs of 
being it contains, 

" Feels a stir of might. 



An instinct within it, that reaches and towers, 

And groping blindly above it for light, 
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers." 

And is the re-animation of our mortal dust — 
the heavenward flight of the soul, a change any 
more wonderful or difficult of belief? The 
smallest flower that blooms upon the humblest 
grave, lifts its head in triumphant refutation of 
the cold unbelief that can consign the human 
dust beneath to the oblivion of eternal sleep. 
If we can find consolation in reflecting that 
Forest Lawn, after lying shrouded in winter 
snows, will, before many weeks, blossom and 
grow green again ; if we have faith that myriad 
germs of mere vegetable life, will develope into 
renewed activity and beauty within its sacred 
enclosures, can we well avoid another conviction, 
that, as those same snows cover still . more 
precious germs of immortal life and beauty, 
they, too, shall one day ripen in the warmth of 
a Sun that never sets — of a summer that shall 
never end. 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 1 27 

RURAL CEMETERIES. 

An elevated position, with a light soil, and a 
surface sufficiently undulating to pass off the 
falling water, thus rendering it easy of drainage, 
with a sufficiency of trees to give it a graceful 
air of repose, are the chief natural requirements 
of the ground for a complete Rural Cemetery. 

The artificial necessities to produce a perfect 
whole, in the features of the Cemetery, may be 
divided into three items, viz : 

First. The laying out or Plan of the grounds, 
— comprising the principal or main entrance, 
with its diverging drives, walks, and paths, and 
the disposition of its streams, ponds, or springs, 
if the grounds embrace them. 

Second. The size, and shape of the burial 
plats, with their several sub-divisions. 

Third. The planting, and ornamentation of 
the whole with trees and shrubbery. 

These, aside from those artificial structures 
which have been already mentioned, may be 
considered chiefly in reference to our own 
grounds of Forest Lawn. 

THE PLAN. 

Bounded wholly on two sides by streets, and 
partially so on the two other sides, these streets 
are to be bordered with shade trees, and the 



128 THE PRESENT 

inner sides protected from intrusion by shrub- 
bery. The trees along the streets will be such 
as attain large size, and arc perfectly hardy in 
character, as the elm, the maple, the linden, and 
horse chestnut, or other trees equally suited to 
the soil and climate. Such plantations give an 
expression of purpose and stability to the enclo- 
sure, and form a striking feature in its outward 
character. 

For admittance, on all occasions of burial, or 
visitation, there is laid out for future uses, one 
grand entrance, and one only. That entrance 
opens on a broad avenue of some length, stately, 
and imposing in character, and leads by diverg- 
ing main courses, of ample width, to other and 
more distant parts of the grounds, yet so planned 
as to reach the entire circumference, making the 
remotest corners accessible to carriages. Thus, 
the first impression given to those who enter the 
cemetery, is that of appropriateness of purpose, 
and dignity of aspect. These interior avenues 
are gently winding, or curving in their courses, 
climbing no steep ascents, threading no deep 
ravines, nor abruptly turning projecting^ points, 
but will look, when finished, as if nature had 
shaped their lines, and art had only softened 
them into convenient form for use. 

To be more definite, our Main Entrance is on 
the south side of the Cemetery, at the head of 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. I 29 

Linwood Avenue, (which leads south, from Dela- 
van Avenue into the heart of the city,) and 
opens into the grounds at a width of sixty feet, 
and passing on several rods, to the first bridge, 
gradually contracts to fifty feet at some distance 
further, where it branches into two chief avenues 
— one leading east, and the other north — to the 
main body, and separate sections of the occupied 
territory. 

Other roads, mostly thirty feet wide, branch 
either from the main entrance avenue, or the 
other two chief ones just described, are laid out, 
and intended for carriage, as well as foot roads. 
These enclose large plats, or sections, which are 
subdivided into lots, for occupation. These last 
are divided from each other by narrow, yet 
commodious, turfed paths. The driving ave- 
nues and roads give access to every lot, without 
cutting the sections into patch-work, and still 
preserve the consistency of the plan, adding 
grace and variety to the general appearance. 
These various avenues are intended to be on a 
level with the adjoining surfaces of the lots, as 
near as may be — or with their edges, at least — 
so as to admit of no abrupt terraces in the way 
of reaching them. The avenues are also to be 
well graded and MacAdamized, or graveled, to 
afford the easiest possible locomotion over them. 

17 



I30 THE PRESENT 



THE STREAM. 



The striking feature which distinguishes 
Forest Lawn from almost every other cemetery, 
is the stream which passes centrally through 
its entire breadth. The naturally stone-walled 
banks ; steep, wooded sides ; graceful curves ; 
rocky bottom, and varied cascades, alternated 
with smoothly flowing waters — all variously 
shaded, with lofty trees, render it an object of 
peculiar interest and beauty. Spanned with 
bridges at different points, to connect the meet- 
ing avenues, a variety of landscape will be 
given to its windings, affording many pleasant 
views. 

THE LAKE. 

Another prominent feature of the grounds, 
will be the proposed Lake, which is to occupy 
the springy marsh just above the bridge now 
connecting the new with the earlier cemetery. 
This lake is to fill about two acres, now useless 
for any other purpose. The springs within the 
ground will supply it with a volume of water to 
keep it full, at a sufficient elevation above the 
stream, which passes it on the north, to prevent 
its floods from interference. 

Still another marked feature of these grounds 
is presented in 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. I3 1 

THE RAMBLE. 

This walk, some twelve or fifteen feet wide, 
occupies the crest of a high, narrow, wooded 
ridge, about fifty rods in length, running along 
the west bank of the stream, elevated nearly 
forty feet above its bed. The eastern slope of 
the ridge is precipitous, and thickly wooded 
with large trees of the original forest, and an 
undergrowth of native shrubbery. Its westerly 
bank is more gently sloping, and, like the other, 
wooded down into the open lawn below. This 
Ramble is appropriated altogether as a foot- 
walk, and its own natural wildness is to be 
preserved, in contrast to the cultivated grounds. 

FIRST, OR OLDER, SECTIONS IN FOREST LAWN. 
As the grounds in the older part of the ceme- 
tery were laid out on a plan widely differing, in 
the narrowness and frequency of its avenues, 
dividing alleys, and foot-paths, and the limited 
area of its sections, from those of the new 
appropriation, it is the intention of the mana- 
gers, (with the consent of the occupying lot 
holders,) to widen some of those avenues into 
commodious driving ways ; to fill others, so as 
to combine the smaller sections into larger ones, 
- corresponding, so far as possible, to the new 
plan, and to level and grass over the interme- 



I3 2 THE PRESENT 

diatc foot-walks; thus adding much to their 
appearance, and the general convenience of their 
approach. A portion of the Drive, or avenue 
on the southerly side of the hill, leading past the 
present Public Vault, and separating the burial 
lots from the wooded lawn below, has already 
been elevated, and made thirty feet wide, adding 
greatly to the effect of that quarter of the 
grounds. This Drive is to be extended along 
and around the border below the elevated north- 
westerly mound, and turning east, near Chapin 
street, will course along the high grounds so as 
to bring the now remoter sections within easy 
access, and throw their otherwise commodious 
proportions into some of the most attractive 
views. 

SIZE, POSITION, AND SHAPE OF BURIAL LOTS. 

These are appropriated on a liberal scale, but 
subject to sub-division to a convenient size for 
the purchasers. All who contemplate possessing 
a Family Burial Ground, as distinguished 
from the narrow space occupied by miscel- 
laneous single graves, should, so far as their 
means will admit, provide ample room for the 
interment, not only of their own dead, but for 
those who follow them. It is a liberal, a 
grateful spirit, thus to provide for our own 
blood and kin. It savors of affection and care 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 1 33 

for those who come after us ; it ennobles the 
character of the living thus to do. To those 
having the means, the cost is of little conse- 
quence ; to those less able, a restriction of 
expense elsewhere, not indispensable to their 
wants, or comfort, is worth consideration. There 
is a melancholy pleasure in the reflection that 
we possess one sacred spot of earth, secure from 
all contingencies of ownership, where our cher- 
ished dead may sleep. The appropriation of a 
good sized lot is therefore suggested. 

The position of the lot is a matter of taste 
with those who select it. Its shape, so that it 
be compact, is of little moment ; nor is its im- 
mediate contiguity to a driving avenue at all 
important. Seclusion, rather than publicity, 
comports With the grave, and a lot, reached by 
a private foot-way, is more in unison with the 
feelings of many friends of the dead, than the 
glare of notoriety. 

It is pleasant to reflect, that when in the grave, 
we are to sleep near those we have known and 
loved in life, rather than among strangers. It 
matters little to the dead themselves, but it is, 
nevertheless, a thought for the living. Thus, 
families who have lived in close neighborhood 
and intimacy for years, may choose to select lots 
adjoining each other, and improve and embellish 
them on a common plan, looking, in fact, like 



134 THE PRESENT 

one common ground, and only recognized by 
their several boundary points, and different mon- 
uments. So far as possible, it is recommended 
that family friends take their lots near each 
other ; and we are happy to remark that many 
groups of lots, even to an entire section, have 
thus been selected, to be improved and orna- 
mented under a common plan. 

PLANTATIONS. 

Trees which attain a large growth, like those 
of our forests, should not be profusely planted 
on burial lots. Standing thickly, they are ob- 
jectionable on many accounts. Their branches 
and tops interlace each other, throwing dark 
shadow and gloom over the ground, and giving 
a grimy, dingy stain to the monuments beneath 
them. Their roots spread far, and run deep, 
interfering with graves already made, and hin- 
dering the excavation of others ; injuring the 
luxuriance of the turf, and sadly marring the 
shrubbery and flowers underneath. A burial 
plat should be partially open to the sky. The 
morning or evening sun should always" shine on 
a grave ! 

Deciduous trees, which sprout, or throw up 
suckers, never should, and are not, permitted to 
be planted — as the abele, or silver poplar, the 
locust, the ailanthus, the silver maple, and some 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 1 35 

others. Although rapid in growth, it is no 
compensation for the nuisances they commit in 
throwing up their interminable suckers. The 
same objection occurs in some kinds of shrub- 
bery, as the lilac, and those of like habit. 

A sufficiency of large trees will be planted by 
the managers of the cemetery, in such situations 
as to give character, grace, and sufficient shade 
to the grounds at large, and in such positions 
as not to interfere too directly with the lots. 
The borders of the principal avenues should be 
shaded to some extent ; but groups, and clumps 
of trees and shrubbery, are always more effective 
over a large surface of unoccupied ground, than 
when in formal rows, or studied platitudes. 

FLOWERS. 

Flowering plants, either biennial or annual, 
may be grouped sparingly over the lots, accord- 
ing to the taste of the proprietor; but they 
should be of select varieties, and receive careful 
culture. The bulbous, and tuberous, equally 
with the fibrous rooted plants, when in sufficient 
variety and contrast, produce a charming effect. 
Even the wild white daisy, the blue violet, the 
yellow dandelion, and many others, native to 
the soil, creeping and threading their delicate 
tendrils along the turf, or glinting out from the 
shadow of a monument, lend a piquant grace to 



I36 THE PRESENT 

the verdure, and should always be indulged in 
their innocent ramblings. Happily, they need 
no care, and, unbidden, throw up their fragrant 
petals, into shade or sunshine, wherever permit- 
ted. Every softening grace should be added to 
the natural attractions of the grounds, which 
care and sympathy may readily command, — 
yet, all comporting with simplicity. 

The great Poet of the human heart loved to 
strew flowers over the graves of his buried 
creations. Thus, in " Hamlet," when the body 
of the beautiful and crazed Ophelia is carried 
out for burial : 

" Lay her i' the earth, 
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh 
May violets spring !" 

said her sorrow stricken brother, Laertes. And 
in many another place he scatters these beautiful 
natural decorations above and around the dead, 
outliving the costliest monuments, in their per- 
petual renewals and ceaseless bloom. So, other 
poets, not only of our own, but of every lan- 
guage and clime, have celebrated Flowers in 
fond association with the grave. There is a 
tenderness, and a pathos in their presence, more 
touching to the heart than " storied urn, or ani- 
mated bust;" and when the memories of men have 
lost the names of those who lie beneath the once 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 1 37 

vividly-marked and frequented place of the dead, 
the simple wild flower of the field keeps watch 
and ward over the neglected dust with the return 
of every spring and summer sun. 

CARE OF THE BURIAL PLATS. 

The efforts of the Managers of the Cemetery 
are intended to invest the entire grounds with 
the dignity of a Park, and the graces of a Lawn, 
and every aid should be given by the lot-holders 
to assist their purpose. The lots in the older 
cemetery were conveyed by their late proprietors 
to the purchasing holders, without any provision 
for keeping them in condition, and they could 
only be kept so by the voluntary care of those 
who bought them. Through the neglect of 
some of the owners yet living here, and the 
absence, or removal elsewhere of others, many 
of these lots are in a sad condition. They 
thus present an unsightly appearance — over- 
grown with wild grass, weeds, or tangled 
hedges, and shrubbery. This should be cor- 
rected. 

The lots in the new grounds are all conveyed 
on the condition that the Trustees shall forever 
keep them well cared for, by duly cutting the 
grass, destroying the weeds, and pruning the 
trees. 



I38 THE PRESENT 

By the payment of ten cents per superficial 
foot on the previously conveyed lots in the 
older grounds, by their owners, they can be 
kept in perpetual order, like those in the new ; 
and no one should neglect to secure such provi- 
sion, as, in so doing, they not only relieve 
themselves of an onerous labor, and annual 
expense, but aid the design of the Managers, in 
effecting a uniformity in all the grounds alike. 



FINANCIAL CONDITION 



"THE BUFFALO CITY CEMETERY." 



To the numerous lot proprietors in Forest 
Lawn, some information of its present financial 
condition, and prospects, may be submitted. As 
every owner of a lot, however small it may be, 
is a member of the Corporation, they must feel 
a solicitude for the proper care of its finances, 
and the good management of its affairs. The 
Trustees, with much satisfaction, make the 
following statement : 

The enterprise, undertaken, as it was, without 
a dollar of capital on which to commence opera- 
tions, was a bold, but by no means a hazardous 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 



139 



venture. Convenience and propriety, as well as 
the increasing necessities of our population, 
demanded a cemetery of this character, and its 
projectors felt assured that in the common 
course of events an ample return would be 
made for all the outlay which might be judi- 
ciously expended upon it. 

As a considerable amount in ready money was 
first necessary, to secure the purchase of the 
several tracts of land to comprise the proposed 
cemetery, the following gentlemen came forward, 
and each subscribed the sums set opposite their 
names, as a permanent loan, the twelve Trustees 
first named, commencing the subscription : 



Francis H. Root, 
George Howard, . . 
DeWitt C. Weed, . 
Sidney Shepard, . . 
Russell H. Hey wood, 
Oliver G. Steele, . . 
Henry Martin, . . 
Orsamus H. Marshall, 
Everard Palmer, . . 
George Truscott, . . 
Dexter P. Rumsey, . 
Lewis F. Allen, . . 
William Wilkeson, . 
George L. Newman, . 
Erastus Scovill, . . 
William H. Glenny, . 
C. F. S. Thomas, . 
John L. Kimberly, 



i 2,000 
2,000 
1,000 
1,000 
1,000 
1,000 
1,000 
1,000 
1,000 
1,000 
1,000 
1,000 
1,000 
1,000 
1,000 
1,000 
1,000 
1,000 



Jason Parker, . . . 

A. P. Yaw, . . • 

Frank W. Tracy, . . 

James Brayley, . . 

James Adams, . . . 

E. Hadley, . . • 

James D. Sawyer, . . 

James D. Sheppard, 
John Benson, . . ■ 
John M. Hutchinson, 
Hart, Ball & Hart, 
Gibson T. Williams, 
George Hadley, . 
A. F. Tripp, . • • 
C. M. Horton, . . 
Pratt & Co. . . • 
Thomas Brown, . 
Laurens Enos, . • 



$1,000 
500 
1,000 
1,000 
1,000 
500 
500 
1,000 
500 
1,000 
500 
1,000 
500 
500 
500 
. 1,000 
500 
500 



THE PRESENT 




$500 


Edward M. Atwater, 


$500 


1,000 


George W. Tifft, . 


500 


I.OOO 


Henry Kip, .... 


500 


500 


Joseph D. Dudley, . . 


1,000 


1,000 


John T. Lacy, . . . 


500 


1,000 


James M. Smith, . . 


500 


500 


S. G. Cornell & Son, 


500 


1,000 


Oscar Cobb, . . . . 


250 


1,000 


O. P; Ramsdell, . . 


500 


1,000 


Thomas Clark, . . . 


1,000 


1,000 


Oliver Bugbee, . . 


500 


1,000 


William H. Walker, . 


500 



140 

Henry T. Gillett, 
William G. Fargo, 

D. C. Beard, . . 
Martin Taylor, . . 

E. G. Spaulding, . 
John D. Shepard, . 
Samuel Smith, . 
Chandler J. Wells, 
J. F. Schoellkopf, 
Wm. Williams, 
Sherman S. Jewett, 
A. Sherwood & Co. 



For the payment of these sums, individual 
corporate bonds to the several amounts were 
issued, payable in ten years, with annual interest 
thereon, redeemable at any intermediate time, in 
lots, at the option of the holders. 

From the funds thus realized, the purchase 
money was paid for the several tracts of outside 
land, consisting of 128 acres. To these were 
added a purchase of the first Forest Lawn 
Cemetery, making 203 acres. The territory has 
since been increased by the purchase of 14 acres, 
making in the whole 217 acres, all lying in a 
compact and accessible body. The unpaid sums 
due for the land purchases, were secured to the 
sellers by the bonds of the Corporation, and 
mortgages on the land, excepting the property 
of the first Forest Lawn, for which, payment 
was made in bonds only. 

The time which these several bonds and 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. I4I 

mortgages now have to run, is three to eight 
years — the average time about six years. 

The whole amount of debt incurred by the 
Association, including the bonds issued for the 
individual subscriptions to the Cash Fund, and 
the bonds and mortgages given for the unpaid 
dues on the land, was $131,650 — the entire 
tracts of land, 217 acres, costing an average of 
a trifle over $600 per acre. 

The sales of lots, under the Association, 
commenced in the spring of 1865. In the 
settlement of the Cemetery accounts, on the 
1st of January, 1867, the books showed the fol- 
lowing results : 

Whole proceeds of Lots sold, $84,487 

Entire Expenses for Improvements, including 
labor, services of all kinds, Personal Pro- 
perty, &c, 31,255 

Debts paid on the Principal, aside from inter- 
est on the whole outstanding debts, to 
January i, 1867 — upwards of ... . 40,000 

Leaving still due, of principal debt, on time, 

with interest — something less than . . 90,000 

With a Working Fund on hand of about 
$3,000, for contingencies. 

Of the subscription cash debt, for which 
bonds were individually issued, to the amount 
of nearly $50,000, there was paid, up to January 
1, 1867, upwards of $25,000 in lots, taken by the 
holders of the bonds, — thus demonstrating the 



142 THE PRESENT 

liberality with which sundry of those gentlemen, 
not previously owning lots in the older Forest 
Lawn, responded, in the purchase of large and 
commodious lots in the new grounds, for their 
own accommodation. These individual cash 
bonds have thus been reduced to less than 
$25,000 — one half their original amount — and it 
is presumed that before the balance of them 
fall due, a considerable further portion may be 
absorbed, in the purchase of lots by their 
holders. 

In a carefully, and, as has been proved, a 
timidly drawn report of a Committee of the 
Trustees, when estimating the prospects of the 
new Association, before making their land pur- 
chases, it was supposed that they would be able, 
after paying their annual interest, and making 
the necessary improvements as they progressed, 
to sink their standing debt at the rate of $10,000 
per annum, thus working the Cemetery out of 
debt at the end of about thirteen years from 
January, 1865, or at the end of the year 1877; 
and on that proposition the Trustees ventured 
the undertaking. 

As the above statements prove, the Trustees 
were widely, yet most favorably, mistaken in 
their calculations ; as, at the rate at which the 
debt has been paid, the whole amount will be 
cancelled within a much shorter period, and the 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 1 43 

necessary improvements extended to all the ter- 
ritory that may be required for new purchasers 

of lots. 

The sales for the present year have opened 
auspiciously. Lots of considerable size, and in 
reasonable number, have already been sold, thus 
far, in nearly equal ratio to the last year. 

But the Trustees can hardly anticipate so 
large annual sales in the years to come, as in 
the past two years, and a longer proportionate 
time may be necessary to entirely wipe out the 
debt. Our city, however, is increasing rapidly 
in population and business, and the Trustees 
have no doubt that, in the common course of 
events, they will be enabled to pay the several 
instalments of debt, and its interest, as they 
fall due. Every department of the Cemetery 
operations is managed with all the foresight 
and economy which their multifarious needs will 
permit, and they look to a time, not far distant, 
when they can present to the corporators a 
beautiful burial-place, free of debt and incum- 
brance altogether. 

From that time forward, all the revenues can 
be expended in the permanent enclosure and 
security of the grounds, and their embellishment 
to an extent commensurate with the importance 
of the work — a lasting monument to the enter- 
prise, taste, and munificence of those who shall 
have participated in the work. 



144 FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 

No debt of whatever character, corporate, or 
individual, stands better secured than that of 
"The Buffalo City Cemetery." The affections 
of the Living for their dead ; the respect of 
Christianity, of Civilization, of Humanity; the 
reverence of those who come after us— all stand 
sponsors for its payment. The Trustees rest, in 
abiding confidence, that their expectations will 
be fulfilled to the uttermost, by a liberal and 
enlightened community. 



BY-LAWS 



OF THE 



BUFFALO CITY CEMETERY. 



ARTICLE I. 



The Cemetery grounds of this Association shall be known by 
the name of " Forest Lawn." 



ARTICLE II. 

The Board of Trustees shall meet on the first Monday of 
each and every month, at the rooms of the Association, and at 
such other times and places, as the President, Vice President, or 
any two Trustees, may direct. 

ARTICLE III. 

A written notice of all meetings, specifying the time and 
place, shall be given by the Secretary, by delivering the same to 
each Trustee personally, or by depositing the same, directed to 
each Trustee, in the post office in Buffalo, at least one day pre- 
vious to the time specified in such notice. 

ARTICLE IV. 

The President shall preside at all meetings of the Board, 
regulate its proceedings, preserve order, and have a casting 
vote. He shall appoint all committees, unless otherwise di- 
rected by the Board, and see that all laws, rules and regulations 
relating to the Cemetery, and its officers, agents and employees, 
are faithfully observed. 
19 



146 THE PRESENT 



ARTICLE V. 

The Vice President shall; in the absence of the President, dis- 
charge all his duties. 

ARTICLE VI. 

The Secretary shall attend all the meetings of the Board, and 
keep a record of all its proceedings. He shall keep an accurate 
account of all receipts and disbursements, and render to the 
Board statements thereof monthly, and at such other times as 
the Board may require. He shall keep a register of all convey- 
ances made by the Association, showing the names of the 
grantees, date and consideration of each conveyance, and a 
description of the lot conveyed. He shall keep a separate 
account of all funds, securities, and property, received from the 
Forest Lawn Cemetery Association, and from the sale of lots 
hereafter sold in the grounds of said Association. 

ARTICLE VII. 

The Treasurer shall have the custody of the corporate seal, 
and charge of all the funds and securities of the Association. 
No payments shall be made by him except on checks drawn by 
the President, and countersigned by the Secretary, in pursuance 
of an order of the Board of Trustees. 

ARTICLE VIII. 

The following Standing Committees shall be appointed by the 
President, and shall hold their offices until the second Monday 
of November succeeding their appointment, and until others 
shall be chosen in their places : 

An Executive Committee of five, of which the President and 
Treasurer shall be cx-officio members. 

An Auditing Committee of three, to which all accounts against 
the Association shall be referred for examination. 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 1 47 

A Committee of five, "on Cemetery Grounds" under the direc- 
tion of which, all surveys of sections, lots, and avenues, and the 
fencing, embellishments, and improvements of the cemetery 
grounds, shall be made. 

ARTICLE IX. 

No lots (in the new grounds,) shall hereafter be sold at a less 
price than fifty cents per square foot. (The lots in the older 
cemetery will be sold at forty cents per square foot, subject to 
the " Certificate of Ownership," next inserted after Article X of 
these By-Laws.) 

article x. 

All conveyances of burial lots shall be under the seal of the 
Corporation, attested by the President and Treasurer, and sub- 
stantially in the following form : They shall be made subject to 
the conditions and limitations, and with the privileges specified 
in the Rules and Regulations that are now in force, or that shall 
from time to time be adopted by the Board, for the regulation 
and government of the Cemetery. 



CERTIFICATE OF OWNERSHIP. 



The Buffalo City Cemetery, of the first part, doth hereby cer- 
tify that , of the second part, the owner of lot 

No. , in section , containing square feet, as desig- 
nated on the map into sections and lots of the cemetery grounds 
of said Association, in the city of Buffalo, known as Forest 
Lawn, and for which the said party of the second part hath paid 
to the said party of the first part, the sum of — — dollars, and 
that, in consideration thereof, the said party of the second part 



I48 THE PRESENT 

is entitled to the perpetual use of said lot for the purpose of 
sepulture alone, subject to the provisions of the act entitled 
"An Act authorizing the Incorporation of Rural Cemetery 
Associations," passed April 27th, 1847, and of the several acts 
adding to, altering, and amending the same, and to the rules and 
regulations that may from time to time be adopted by the party 
of the first part, for the regulation and government of the said 
cemetery. And the said party of the first part doth agree, that 
it will at all times liereafter maintain said lot in good order and 
condition, and, as often as shall be 7icccssary, cause the grass 
thereon to be cut, the trees and shrubbery to be trimmed, and the 
monuments thereon to be cleaned and adjusted ; provided, how- 
ever, that this agreement shall not be held to embrace the 
renewal, rebuilding, painting, or repairing of any of the struc- 
tures on said lot. 

In testimony whereof, the said Buffalo City Cemetery hath 
caused its common seal to be hereto affixed, and the same to be 
attested by the signatures of its President and Treasurer, the 

■ day of , in the year of our Lord one thousand eight 

hundred and . 

President. 

[L. S.] 

Treasurer. 



RULES AND REGULATIONS. 



I. All Lots shall be held in pursuance of an act entitled 
" An Act authorizing the Incorporation of Rural Cemeteries," 
passed April 27, 1847, an d the several acts adding to, altering, 
and amending the same, and shall not be used for any other 
purpose than as burial places for the dead ; nor shall any person 
be allowed to be interred therein, who shall have been executed 
for any crime. 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 1 49 

II. All fences, railings, walls, and hedges, in, or upon, any 
of the lots, are prohibited. The boundaries of lots may be 
designated by corner stones, not rising over two inches above 
the surface of the ground. 

III. Proprietors shall not allow interments to be made in 
their lots for a remuneration ; nor shall any transfer or assign- 
ment of any lot, or of any interest therein, be valid, without the 
consent in writing of the Board of Trustees, first had and en- 
dorsed upon such transfer or assignment, and entered on the 
books of the Association. 

IV. No disinterment shall be allowed, without permission 
being first obtained at the office of the Association. 

V. The proprietors of each lot shall have the right to erect 
any proper stones, monuments, or sepulchral structures thereon ; 
except that no slab shall be set in other than a horizontal 
position ; that no head or foot stones will be permitted, 
exceeding two feet in height above the surface of the ground, 
or less than five inches in thickness, nor unless placed 
on a cut stone base, with stone foundation at least six 
feet deep ; that the foundation of all monumental structures 
shall not be less than six feet deep ; that no vault shall be built 
entirely or partly above ground, without permission of the 
Trustees of the Association. And all monuments, and all parts 
of vaults above ground, shall be of cut stone, granite, marble, 
or iron. The proprietors of each lot shall also have the right, 
under the direction of the Superintendent, to cultivate trees, 
shrubs, and plants in the same, but no tree, growing within the 
lot or borders, shall be cut down or destroyed, or any change 
made therein, without the consent of the Trustees of the Asso- 
ciation. 

VI. If any trees or shrubs, situated on any lot, shall, by 
means of their roots, branches, or otherwise, become detrimental 
to the adjacent lots or avenues, or unsightly, or inconvenient to 
passers by, it shall be the duty of the Association, and they 



150 THE PRESENT 

shall have the right, to enter the said lot, and remove the said 
trees and shrubs, or such parts thereof as are detrimental, un- 
sightly, or inconvenient. 

VII. If any monument, effigy, or inclosure, or any structure 
whatever, or any inscription, be placed in or upon any lot, which 
shall be determined by the Trustees of the Association, to be 
offensive and improper, or injurious to the appearance of the 
surrounding lots or grounds, they shall have the right, and it 
shall be their duty, to enter upon such lots and remove the said 
offensive or improper object or objects. 

VIII. It shall be the duty of the Board of Trustees, from 
time to time, to lay out, alter, or discontinue such avenues or 
walks, and to make such rules and regulations for the govern- 
ment of the grounds, as they may deem requisite and proper to 
secure and promote the general objects of the institution. 

IX. The proprietors of lots and their families, and other 
persons, having written permits, shall be allowed access to the 
grounds at all times, observing the rules which are or may be 
adopted for the regulation of visitors. 

X. The Board shall elect, as often as may be necessary, a 
" Superintendent of the Cemetery Grounds," who shall hold his 
office at a fixed salary during the pleasure of the Board. He 
shall, under the direction of the Committee on Grounds, have 
the general charge and superintendence of the Cemetery 
Grounds, and shall report, from time to time, their condition to 
the Board. He shall devote his whole time and attention to the 
interests of the Association, and use his best endeavors to make 
sales of burial lots. 

XI. No officer, except the Superintendent, Secretary, and 
Treasurer, shall be entitled to any compensation for services 
rendered the Association as such officers, except for special ser- 
vices ordered by the Board. 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 



151 



XII. Five Trustees shall constitute a quorum for the trans- 
action of business. At every meeting of the Board, the order 
of proceeding shall be as follows : 



Reading of the Minutes of the last meeting. 

Reports of Officers. 

Reports of Committees. 

Motions, Resolutions, and Notices. 

Unfinished and Miscellaneous Business. 



XIII. These By-Laws shall not be amended or suspended, 
except by an affirmative vote of at least eight Trustees, at a 
meeting duly called and organized. 



LIST OF LOT HOLDERS. 



Abel, Charles L. 
Abernethy, A. 
Abbott, J. S. 
Abbott, W. S. 
Acton, A. 
Adams, James, 
Adams, Martha, 
Adams, F. D. 
Adams, K. 
Alberger, L. F. 
Albro, James, 
Albro, W. H. 

Alexander, , 

Alexander, R. M. 
Allen, Henry, 
Allen, J. W. 
Allen, Levi, 
Allen, Lewis F. 
Allen, Margaret, 
Allen, Orlando, 
Allen, W. D. 
Allen, William, 
Allman, G. F. 
Amedinger, C. F. 

Andrews, , 

Anthony, A. C. 
Anthony, J. C. 
Anthony & Fask, 
Anthony & Richardson, 
Arey, Oliver, 
Ashley, J 



Ashton, Isaac, 
Austin, B. H. & Bro. 
Austin, Harriet, 
Averill, J. K. 
Aykroyd, Catherine, 
Babcock Brothers, 
Babcock, G. R. 
Bagnall, B. 
Bailey, George, 
Bailey, George, 
Bailey, Gordon, 
Bailey, J. B. 
Baine, J. F. 
Baine, W. 
Baker, A. O. 
Baker, Howard, 
Balcomb, P. A. 
Baldy, Mrs. C. E. 
Baldy, C. M. 
Baldy, Mary, 
Ballman, W. 
Banks, L. A. 
Banta, Mrs. 
Bantom, J. S. 
Barker, G. & S. 
Barker, Mrs. J. A. 
Barnard, R. 
Barnes Brothers, 
Barnes, Henry, 
Barnes, Joshua, 
Barnum, A. 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 



153 



Barnum, G. G. 
Barnum, S. 0. 
Barr, C. 
Barr, R. & W. 
Barthur, C. F. 
Bartlett, F. W. 
Barton, E. 
Barton, Mrs. T. D. 
Baylis, C. 
Beals, E. P. 
Beardsley, Josiah, 
Beatty, Charles, 
Becker, A. V. 
Belden, D. 
Bell, David, 
Bemis, A. S. & E. S. 
Bemig, Mrs. A. 
Bender, P. H. 
Bennett, E. W. 

Bennett & Ferris, 

Bennett, J. 

Benson, J. 

Bentley, George, 

Bentley, J. R. 

Berger, 0. 

Bergman, , 

Berne, T. 

Berry, J. D. 

Best, C. A. 

Best, Mary, 

Best, R. H. 

Best. William F. 

Beyer, Jacob, 

Beyer, M. S. 

Beyer, P. & J. 

Bid well, B. 

Bidwell, C. S. 

Bierma, A. 

Bierma, Eliza, 

Bill, R. 

Bingeman, John, 

Bingham, R. K. 
20 



Bird, W. A. 
Birge, M. H. 
Bishop, W. B. 
Bissell, H. H. 
Blachford, D. 
Black, J. L. 
Blackmond, E. T. 
Blain, R. J. 
Blakeley, W. 
Blanchard, W. D. 
Blanchett & others, 
Bloomer, Adelia, 
Blossom, J. H. 
Bradford, W. R. 
Bradman, B. C. 
Braids, William, 

Brailey, , 

Brayley, James, 
Brewster, E. 
Bridgman & Humphrey, 
Bridgman, J. W. 
Brierly & Warner, 
Briggs, H. A. 
Bristol, Moses, 

Broad, A. 

Brodheacl, F. T. 

Brokenborough, A. S. 

Brooks, L. A. & S. 

Brooks, Mrs. W. 

Brothers, J. L. 

Brown, Alva, 

Brown, F. S. 

Brown, J. H. 

Brown, Mrs. 

Brown, N. 

Brown, S. C. 

Brown, S. S. 

Brown, Thaddeus, 

Brown, Thomas, 

Brown, W. 0. 

Bruce, Harlow, 

Bruce, E. K. 



154 



THE PRESENT 



Brunck, P. C. 

Brush, W. 
Bryant, Abncr, 
Bryant, G. II. 
Bryant, W. E. 
Bryant, Warren, 
Bryson, Mary, 
Bogart, J. P. 
Boggis, William, 
Boice, Isaac, 
Bomgardner, Elizabeth, 
Bond, E. T. 
Bond, 0. 
Bouncy, Z. 
Booth, J. W. 
Borne, Jacob, 
Botholoray, P. 
Bowen, Dennis, 
Bowen, J. P. 
Boyd, D. 
Boyd, James, 
Boyd, R. D. 
Boyd, T. 
Buckley, H. 
Buell, V. M. 
Buffalo City, 
Bugbee, 0. 
Bulger, Mrs. 
Bull, A. 
Bull, A. M. 
Bully more, R. 
Bullymore, T. 
Burch, J. A. 
Burg, M. 
Burns Brothers, 
I! urns, J. 
Burr, E. D. 
Burr, Sidney, 
Hurl, Mrs. D. 
Burt, II. B. 
Burwell, Maria T. 
Bush, Mrs. Adam, 



Bush, G. W. 
Bush, J. & M. P. 
Buslier, C. 
Butler, Charles, 
Butman, W. 
Butter, M. 
Butterfield, J. H. 
Button, J. T. 
Cadwalader, M. 
Callender, S. N. 
Cameron, E. 
Cameron & others, 
Cambell, H. 
Campbell, H. B. 
Campbell, J. A. B. 
Candee, G. 
Card, William, . 
Carey, A. 
Carmichael, H. 
Carmichael, R. 
Carpenter, Carr, 
Carpenter, II. S. 
Carpenter, S. V. 
Carr, Corydon, 

Carrick, , 

Carroll, P. 
Carson, J. A. 
Carter, George, 
Caryl, B. 
Casey, L. D. 
Cash, A. 
Casper, F. 
Castle, D. B. 
Catlin, A. W. 
Cato, Peter, 
Chamberlin, 



Chamberlin, J. 
Chamot, C. P. 
Chamot, T. V. 
Champlin, S. 
Chandler, E. M. 
Chandler, Henry. 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 



155 



Chapin, Mrs. 

Cbapin, S. 
Chapin, S. C. 
Chaplin, I. 
Chapman, M. 
Chase, S. A. 
Cheeseman, ~W. 
Chester, A. G 
Child, P. A. 
Church, L. S. 
Clancey, W. B. 
Clapp, A. M. 
Clapp, H. H. 
Claraluna, Susan, 
Clark, Adam, 
Clark, C..E. 
Clark, D.' 
Clark, Mrs. E. 
Clark, Edward, 
Clark, Erastus, 
Clark, F. 
Clark, J. W. 
Clark, Myron EC. 
Clark, Orton S. 
Clark, Seth, 
Clarke, Horace, 
Clarke, J. E. 
Clement, Jesse, 
Clifford, J. 
Clifton, Henry, 
Clinton, G. W. 
Clor, M. 
Close, E. 

Coatsworth, A. J. 
Coatsworth, C. 
Cobb, A. E. 
Cobb, Oscar, 
Coe, Mrs. Elizabeth, 
Coe, Spencer C. 
Cogswell, M. F. 
Coit, George, 
Colburn, J. G. 



Colburn, E. H. 
Colby, P. S. 
Colegrove, B. H. 
Coleman, James, 
Colie, G. W. 
Colley, D. D. 
Colquohoun, D. 
Colvin, Susan A. 
Compton, L. 
Comstock, M. 
Comstock, M. L. 
Conkhng, Mrs. A. 
Cook, Amelia, 
Cook, Eli, 
Cook, J. 
Cooley, Louise, 
Coombs, Eobert, 
Corns, Joseph, 
Cornwell, Eliza, 
Cothran, G. W. 
Cotter, E. B. & H. B. 
Cottier, Mrs. 
Couldock, C. W. 
Courter, E. 
Cowdry, George, 
Cowen, E. 
Cowing, H. 0. 
Cowles, E. 
Cowles, J. H, 
Coye, Schuyler, 
Crane, T. 
Crawford, J. 
Crawford, Maria, 
Crittenden, S. TV. 
Crooker, George, 
Crosby, N. 
Crosier, J. M. 
Cross, John E. 
Crowder J. 
Curran, T. 
Curson, E. D. 
Curtiss, S. 



156 



THE PRESENT 



Curtiss, C. G. 
Curtiss, II. A. 
Curtiss, Watin, 

Cutter, C. L. 
Cutting, T. S. 
Dakin, George, 

Danforth, L. 
Danforth, O. E. 
Dann, E. S. 
Darling, J. 
Darragh, J. 
Dart, Mrs. G. 
Dascomb, C. 
Dascomb, H. 
Dascomb, W. 
David, J. M. 
Davidson, B. F. 
Davis, M. 
Davis, I. A. 
Davis, Mrs. 
Davis, T. 
Davis, W. 
Davison, Sally, 
Davock, M. 
Dawrs, William, 
Day, Ebenezer, 
Dayton, L. P. 
Decker, II. 
De Forest, C. H. 

Dehr, , 

De Long, J. S. 
Dell, R. 

Demarest, W. C. 
Deming, Jacob, 
Densmore, J. 
Denton, R. 
Derr, J. 
Derrick, Mrs. S. 

De Speis, , 

Dick, R. & N. 
Dickie, A. 
Dickie, J. G. 



Dickinson, F. 

Dickman, Mrs. Catherine, 

Dickman, Charles, 
Dimick, Capt. 
Dimond, A. 
Dimond, H. S. 
Dinwoodie, W. 
Dixon, William, 
Dodd, M. J. 
Dodge, T. 
Dodge, Tabitha, 
Dole, J. A. 

Donahoe, , 

Donald, T. 

Donaldson, J. D. & W. 
Dorr Brothers, . 
Dorr, E. P. 
Dorsheimer, P. 
Dorst, F. 
Dorst, Jacob, 
Douglass, James, 
Dover, G. 
Dover, H. & R. 
Dow, G. 
Dow, W. F. 
Dowd, Isabella, 
Downs, E. 
Doyle, W. L. 
Drehr, O. & F. 
Drullard, R. 
Dudley, C. H. 
Dudley, G. E. 
Dudley, J. G. 
Dudley, Joseph S. 
Duering, F. 
Duff, A. M. 
Dunbar, C. M. 
Dunbar, R. 
Dunn, J. P. 
Durick, James, 

Dustin, , 

Dustin, Mrs. J. 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 



157 



Duthie, James, 
Dutton, E. W. 
Duzenbeny, E. F. 
Earls, H. 
Eastwick, J. 
Eaton, C. S. 
Eaton, E. A. 
Eaton, P. B. 
Eberhardt, 0. 
Eberhart, B. 
Eckhart, J. 
Eckliart, F. 

Eckley, , 

Eddy, R. M. 

Edmonds, R. 

Efner, E. D. 

Eggert, B. T. 

Eighme, M. 

Elder, Stewart, 

Eldridge, S. 

Ellicott, B. 

Ellicott, B. 

Elricb, F. 

Ely, Jobn, 

Ely, Samuel, 

Emerick, J. 

Emering, F. 

Emig, Jacob, 

Emslie, P. 

Enos, Joseph, 

Enos, Lawrence, 

Ensign, C. 

Erb, D. 

Erb, John, 

Erhnback, P. 

Ernst, E. 

Ernst, J. D. 

Eva, Adam, 

Evans, B. H. & A. H. 

Evans, C. W. 

Evans, Mrs. Galon, 

Evans, J. C. 



Evans, Lewis E. 
Evans, 0. B. 
Evans, R. 
Evans, T. 
Faber, J. 
Fanner, Charles, 
Fargo, J. B. 
Fargo, W. G. 
Farmer, "W. 
Farnham, T. 
Farrer, C. M. 
Farrill, Mrs. J. 
Farwell, E. D. 
Fatty, G. L. 
Faude, Jacob, 
Faxon, J. 
Fay, A. F. 
Featherston, W. H. 
Fellows, E. 
Fellows, E. W. 
Fellows, J. 
Felthousen, J. 
Felton, C. E. 
Fero, John, 
Fero, Mrs. 
Ferris & Bennett, 
Ferris, R. B. 
Fields, H. 
Fields, S. H. 
Fillmore, M. 
Finley, H. & R. 
Firmenich, Joseph, 
Fischer, F. 
Fish, H. S. 
Fish, J. M. 
Fish, Sarah, 
Fiske, "William, 
Fitch, F. G. 
Fitzpatrick, Thomas, 
Flagg, Louise, 
Flagg, S. D. 
Fleet, Alexander, 



■58 



THE PRESENT 



Flersheim, \V. 

Flershiem, , 

Flynn, J. 
Fobes, W. D. 
Foel, John, 
Folgen, Margaret, 
Follett, 0. 
Foltz, J. W. 
Foote, R. S. 
Forbush, A. B. 
Ford, 0. F. 
Ford, Elijah, 
Forde, Mathew, 
Forrester, 0. 0. 
Forsyth, J. 
Forsyth, J. G. 
Fortier, C. J. &. J. 
Foster, Joseph, 
Foster, J. D. 
Foster, J. F. 
Foster, Sarah, 
Fowler, B. 
Fowler, E. F. 
Fowler, G. 
Fox, W. A. 
Fox, W. G. 
Fraelich, J. 
Frame, Alexander, 
Frances, D. 
Frank, S. A. 
Fraser, D. 

Freeman, , 

Freeman, J. M. 
French, J. A. 
French, T. B. 
Frost, Ellen, 
Fursman, E. L. 
Gager, C. L. 
Galagher, E. 
Galagin, F. H. 
Gall, M. 
Galloway, S. 



Gamil, C. 
Ganson, J. S. 
G an son, J. W. 
Gardiner, E. J. 
Gardner, Hannah K. 
Garrett, W. 
Garvin, H. D. 
Gatchell, J. B. 
Gates, G. B. 
Gates, Horatio, 
Gates, J. H. 

Gelston, , 

Gemel, J. 
Genor, Henry, 
Georger, C. 
Gering, J. G. 
Geyer, F. C. 
Gibbs, A. 
Gibson, Mary, 
Gibson, Samuel, 
Giffing, W. H. 
Gilbert, H. S. 
Gillett, H. T. 
Gillig, Lorens, 
Given, G. R. 
Glasford, T. H. 
Glenny, W. H. 
Goening, F. 
Goewey, Dean D. 
Good, D. & others. 
Goodenough, R. A. 
Goodwin, S. 
Gorman, Mary, 
Gould, William, 
Go wans, Peter, 
Gowdy, II. 
Graff, G. 
Graham, A. 

Graham, , 

Graig, J. 

Granger, Mrs. W. 
Granger, W. & J. N. 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 



159 



Grant, W. 
Green, W. H. 
Gregory, A. S. 
Greiner, G. 
Greiner, P. 
Grey, E. G. 
Gridley, F. 
Grieben, J. 
Griffin, A. L. 
Griner, J. 
Groesbeck, Mrs. 
Grosvenor, Jane M. 
Guenther, J. G. 
Guild, H. 
Gumbert, J. 
Gunn, James, 
Guthrie, E. B. 
Guthrie, S. S. 
Hadley, E. 
Hagerman, J. A. 
Haggart, Mrs. 
Haines, E. 
Haldane, J. 
Halifax, N. 
Hall, Mrs. 
Hail, Nathaniel, 
Hall, Nathan K. 
Hall, P. 
Haller, J. 
Haller, J. G. 

Hambel, , 

Hamilton & Harmon, 
Hammond, C. 
Hammond, Mrs. J. 
Hampton, T. S. 
Harkstein, A. H. 
Harmon, C. 
Harris, A. P. 
Harris, J. 
Harris, P. 
Harrison, J. C. 
Hart, Austin S. 



Hart, E. A. 

Hart, Robert, 
Hart, W. A. 
Hart, W. B. 
Harty, J. D. 
Hartzell, J. H. 
Harvey, E. 
Harvey, W. R. 
Hatch, A. P. 
Hatch, J. H. 
Hauenstein & others. 
Haven, S. G. 
Hawkins, H. 
Hawkins, W. H. 
Hawks, T. S. 
Hawley, E. S. 
Hawley, L. 
Hawley, Maria, 
Hawley, M. S. 
Hayes, George E. 
Hayne, J. P. 
Haywood, S. H. 
Hazard, M. 
Hazle, W. 
Head, J. A. 
Hefford, P. 
Heiser, G. 
Heiser, J. 
Helt, F. 
Hemming, Mrs. 
Hempstreet, N. H. 
Henderson, A. N. 
Henderson, J. J. 
Henderson, Mrs. 
Henry, W. H. 
Hepworth, W. 11. 
Hersee, T. 
Hettrick, P. 
Heywood, R. II. 
Hibbard, G. L. 
Hibbard, L. D. 
Hibbard, P. L. 



i6o 



THE PRESENT 



Hickman, A. 
Hicks, J. B. 
Higgins, C. D. 
Higgins, Z. 
Hill, J. D. 
Hill, James, 
Hills, G. M. 
Hills & Spencer, 
Hingston, W. 
Hitz, G. 
Hoag, D. 
Hodge, B. 
Hodge, P. 
Hodge, V. 
Hodges, George, 
Hodgkins, R. W. 
Hoffman, D. 
Hoffman, M. B. 
Holbrook, E. A. 
Holbrook, L. M. 

Holland, , 

Hollinshead, J. 
Hollister, J. & R. 
Holloway & others, 
Holman, E. D. 
Hopkins, M. 
Hopkins, N. K. 
Hornbeck, J. 
Horton, C. M. 
Hosmer, G. P. 
Hosmer, G. W. 
Hosmer, S. 
Hotclikiss, H. 
Hottinger, M. 
Houck, J. 
Howard, A. A. 
Howard, C. 
Howard, E. II. 
Howard, George, 
Howard, R. L. 
Howell, A. P. 
Howell, D. 



Hoyt, , 

Hoyt, G. 

Hoyt, J. 
Hoyt, J. G. 
Hoyt, 0. C. 
lluax, S. & W. H. 
Hubbard, C. J. 
Huber, C. 
Hucker, N. 
Hughs, W. O. 
Humble, J. 
Humphrey, G. 
Humphrey, John, 
Hunt, S. E. 
Hunter, J. B. 
Husong, F. 
Hussey, C. E. 
Hutchinson, J. M. 
Hutchinson, Mrs. 
Hylman, Mrs. 
Ingalls, George W. 
Ingersoll, E. 
Inglesant, W. R. 
Inman, H. 
Irons, Olive, 
Ives, James H. 
Jackson, J. M. 
Jackson, M. F. 

Jameson, , 

Janes, N. 
Janett, W. 
Jebb, T. 

Jebb, Thomas A. 
Jeffry, C. 
Jewett, J. C. 
Jewett, M. 
Jimeson, J. 
Johnson, A. 
Johnson, A. C. 
Johnson, A. M. 
Johnson, D. 
Johnson, H. 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 



161 



Johnson, J. M. 
Johnson, Mrs. 
Johnson, R. R. 

Johnson, Richard, 

Jones, A. J. & others. 

Jones, Albert, 

Jones, F. N. 

Jones, G. B. 

Jones, Miles, 

Jones, S. C. 

Jordan, Sarah, 

Josephs, Joseph, 

Joslyn, D. M. 

Judson, W. H. 

Justin, A. A. 

Kale, Captain, 

Kalmback, Maria, 

Karl, A. 

Kelderhouse, J. 

Kellar, C. 

Kelly, D. 

Kemp, Thomas, 

Kendall, F. 

Kendall, R. 

Kendrick, M. 

Kennedy, T. 

Kerdel, John, 
Ketcham, A. R. 
Ketchum, W. F. 
Ketchum, "William, 
Kettle, J. 

Keubier, , 

Keubler, P. 
Kibbe, G. R. 
Kimberly, J. L. 
Kimp, A. 
King, Julia B. 
King, Walter, 
King, William, 
Kingsley, A. 
Kingston, George, 
Kinnie, H. M. 
21 



Kipp, Henry, 

Kitson, J. 

Klein, Miss F. A. 

Kline, U. 

Kneeland, E. Y. 

Knolpa, H. L. 

Knox, E. B. 

Koble, M. 

Kratt, P. W. 

Kress, F. 

Kruse, C. H. 

Kull, G. F. 

Kurtzman, C. 

Kustar & Speckman, 

Lacy, Edgar, 

Lacy, John T. 

Lamphier, H. H. 

Lamput, J. 

Lander, G. 

Landerbecker, F. 

Landsittle, A. 

Lane, George A. 

Lang, D. A. 

Lang, J. 

Langdon, G. P. 

Langdon, W. 

Lanning, A. P. 
Lansing, H. L. 
Lappin, R. 
Lapsley, G. 
Larkin, W. 
Lathrop, S. 
Lathrop, S. H. 
Latta, R. 

Lautenschlager, Elizabeth 
Laverack, W. 
Lay, Mrs. C. 
Lay, John, 

Laycock, 

Leavenworth, K. 
Leavitt, J. S. 
Lee, C. P. 



l62 



THE PRESENT 



Lee, J. H. 
Leonard, Mary, 
Lereaux, Andrew, 
Levine, D. A. 
Lewis, G. M. 
Lewis, L. D. 
Lewis, M. W. 
Litclitenstein, B. 
Little, Mrs. 
Loban, A. 
Lock, C. H. 
Lock, J. 
Lockwood, J. 
Lockwood, T. T. 
Loegler, F. 
Loft, W. 

Long, , 

Loomis, H. N. 
Lord, C. 
Lord, J. C. 
Lore, John, 
Lorenz, P. G. 
Loring, W. 
Losee, A. F. 
Love, James, 
Love, Levi, 
Love, Mrs. M. 
Love, "William, 
Lovejoy, S. 
Loveridge, E. D. 
Lovering, William, 
Lucas, L. D. 
Luce, Ann, 
Ludlow, Captain, 
Lyman, E. A. 
Lyman, N. 
Lymburner, H. M. 
Lynch, J. 
Lynde, B. 
Lyon, J. S. 
Lyon, S. W. 
Lyons, J. W. 



Lyport, D. 
Lytle, J. S. 
Macy, J. B. 
Madden, E. 
Mahon, Captain, 
Maibee, L. J. 
Manchester, A. B. 
Manley, C. 
Mann, J. 
Mann, W. W. 

Marcellus, , 

Marsh, P. S. 
Marshall, J. 
Marshall, Mary, 
Marshall, 0. H. 
Marshall, W. 
Martin, F. 
Martin, H. 
Martin, Henry, 
Martin, P. 
Martin, W. 
Marvin, E. 
Marvin, George L. 
Marvin, Le Grand, 
Mason, F. 
Mason, J. 
Mason, W. 
Masten, J. G. 
Mathews, E. 
Matteson, C. J. 
Matteson, H. H. 
Mattice, Mrs. 
Maxwell, Elizabeth 
Maynard, E. A. 
Maynard, R. H. 

McAllister, , 

McAllister, A. 
McAllister, J. 
Mc Arthur, A. 
McBride, A. 

McCarney, , 

McCloud, A. 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 



163 



McComb, Mrs. 
McConkey, J. 
McCredie, James, 
McDonald, W. H. 
McEwen, W. B. 

McFarland, , 

McGeon, J. 
McGeon, .M. 
McGeon, William, 

McGilvary, , 

Mcintosh, R. 
McKay, Alexander, 
McKibben, R. 
McKinzey, Maria, 

McKnight, , 

McLeland, , 

McMillen, H. 
McMullen, Mrs. 
McMullen, Margaret, 
McMurtrie, J. 
Meeker, H. N. 
Mendsen, T. H. 
Mensch, W. 
Mercer, W. 
Merrill, A. F. 
Merrill, A. S. 

Merriman, , 

Meyer, J. W. A. 
Michael, J. 
Millard, T. E. 
Miller, A. 
Miller, A. D. A. 
Miller, A. P. 
Miller, Alexander, 
Miller, P. 
Miller, S. F. 
Miller, S. W. 
Miller, W. F. 
Millering, W^. S. 
Millikin, E. A. 
Millington, J. M. 
Mills. J. W. 



Mills, Josiah, 
Mills, S. W. 
Mills, W. 
Mitchell, M. 
Mitchell, Thomas, 
Mitchell, W. H. 
Mixer, S. F. 
Moessinger, George, 
Moharg, J. 
Mohr, Edward, 
Montgomery, H. M. 
Montgomery, John, 
Montgomery, R. 
Moore, C. 
Moore, E. B. 
Moore, G. A. 
Moore, Mary, 
Morgan, A. 
Morgan & Cullen, 
Morgan, E. J. 
Morgan, Lucy, 
Morgan, W. E. 

Morrison, , 

Morse, C. B. 
Morse, F. E. 
Morse, H. 
Morse, Mary A. 
Morse, P. 
Moses, W. 
Movius, Julius, 
Mugridge, W. L. 
Mulligan, E. 
Mulligan, H. S. 
Mullin, W. 
Murphey, T. J. 
Murray, Mrs. 
Murray, L. R. 
Murray, M. L. 
Muson, C. 
Myers & others, 
Myers, F. H. 
Nain, W. 



164 



THE PRESENT 



Needham, J. P. 

Neibecker, , 

Nelson, A. 
Nelson, A. N. 
Nelson, A. V. 
Nelson, Abner, 
Nelson, H. W. 
Nelson, Mary, 
Nesbitt, Samuel, 
Nespel, J. 
Nettleton, A. B. 
Newell, B. T. 
Newman, G. L. 
Newman, J. 
Newton, L. 
Nicholls, M. 
Nickles, W. 
Niles, Hiram, 
Nimbs, Mrs. Jane, 
Nolton, J. H. 
Norton, C. D. 
Norton, J. M. 
Norval, J. 
Notter, G. H. 
Noye, J. T. 
Noyes, H. A. 
Oatman, Sarah, 
Oberist, Mrs. 
Oelrich, Frederick, 
Ohlmer, H. 
Oliver, J. 
Oliver, W. G. 
Olmsted, S. 
Olson, G. 
Orr, A. B. 
Orr, George, 
Osborne, Marietta, 
Otis, N. J. 
Otschlager, J. 
Ottley, T. M. 
Otto, John, 
Otto, Louis, 



Ovens, R. 
Owen, W. 
Page, E. H. 
Paige, Mrs. 
Palmer, E. 
Palmer, E. A. 
Palmer, Everard, 
Palmer, R. C. 
Park, P. 
Parker, A. 
Parker, J. 
Parker, P. G. 
Parmelee, H. 
Parr, George, 
Parrott, George, 
Parsons, S. V. 
Partridge, E. 
Partridge, W. 
Patchin, E. A. 
Patchin, Mrs. I. 
Patten, J. 
Patteson, W. 
Pattison, F. G. 
Patton, J. N. 
Paul, Augustus, 
Paxton, A. 
Payne, G. 
Peabody, J. H. 
Peabody, W. H. 
Pearson, J. 
Pease, F. H. 
Pease, J. S. 
Pease, John, 
Peet, Ann, 
Penfield, T. V. N. 
Perkins, T. G. 
Persch, H. C. 
Peters, E. 
Petrie, William, 
Pettibone, J. 
Pfeifer, A. F. 
Pfeifer, H. P. 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 



165 



Pfiepher, J. G. 
Pfifer, Mrs. 
Phelps, O. 
Philips, S. 
Phillips, W. 
Philpot, C. 
Phizmire, Mrs. 
Pierce, L. 
Pinner, M. 
Pitkin, P. J. 
Pitts, "W. H. 
Plater, Mrs. 
Poh, S. 
Pollard, J. 
Poole, C. 0. 
Poole, R. 
Pooley, G. 
Pooley, W. 
Poppenburg, A. B. 
Porter, W. 
Post, W. 
Postal, C. 
Potter, H. B. 
Potts, R. 
Powell, D. 
Powell, E. H. 
Powell, J. 
Powell, M. H. 
Pratt, James, 
Pratt, P. P. 
Pratt, S. F. 
Presbrey, 0. F. 
Prince, A. J. 
Provost, S. A. 
Putnam, J. 0. 
Pynchon L. R. 
Quails, "W. 
Quinn, J. 
Radcliffe, J. 
Rainey, H. L. 
Ranall, J. 
Rand, A. B. 



Randall, N. 
Randall, S. 
Randall, V. 
Ransom, A. R. 
Ransom, J. G-. 
Ransom, J. R. 
Rappold, G. 
Rathbone, R. W. 
Rathbun, Thomas, 
Ray, A. M. 
Ray, John, 
Ray, T. S. 
Raze, A. S. 
Raze, H. N. 
Reed, J. S. 
Reed, James, 
Reed, N. 
Reed, W. S. 
Reeves, L. 
Rehan, Mrs. 
Reidshaw, Thomas, 
Reinhart, G. A. 
Relf, A. 

Remington, C. K. 
Renwick, R. 
Reubens, H. 
Reyburn, T. C. 
Reynolds, A. 
Rheil, C. C. 
Rheim, A. 
Ribble, C. 
Ribble, P. 
Rice & Bay lis, 
Rice, V. M. 
Richards, L. F. 

Richardson, , 

Richardson, E. R. 
Richardson, G. 
Richardson, P. J. 
Richie, M. & F. 
Richmond, C. Y. 
Rider, J. A. 



1 66 



THE PRESENT 



Riley, Mrs. 
Riley, J. G. 
Robertson, G. TV. 
Robinson, L. 
Robinson, M. 
Robinson, M. L. 
Robson, J. 0. 
Rochester, H. J. 
Rockwell, S. D. 
Rogers, H. TV. 
Rogers, John, 
Romber, I. J. 
Root, A. 
Root, Mrs. E. 
Root, F. H. 
Root, Mary, 
Rosa, M. 
Rose, C. 
Rose, H. 
Rossiter, J. 
Rowley, J. 

Rudolph, , 

Rudy, J. 
Ruger, J. TV. 
Rulin, A. 
Rumrill, L. H. 
Rumsey, A. 
Runcie, H. 
Runcie, J. 
Russ, TV. S. 
Russell, R. G. 
Rust, C. 
Safford, H. L. 
Sage, R. C. 
Salisbury, C. B. 
Salisbury, G. H. 
Salisbury, P. A. 
Samuel, John, 
Sangster, S. 
Sanspaugh, P. 

Sargent, , 

Saunders, H. B. 



Savage, T. 
Sawin, A. 
Sawin, Silas, 
Sawyer, J. D. 
Schanzlin, J. F. 
Schleegel, C. A. 
Schmal, P. 
Schmesdel, Catherine, 
Schmidt, M. 
Schmidt, Mrs. M. 
Schoellkopf, J. F: 
Schofield, A. 
Schrodt. L. 
Schryver, A. L. 
Schule, J. G. 
Schultz, L. 
Schumaker, V. 
Schuyler, D. 
Schuyler, Daniel, 
Scott, F. 
Scott, F. B. 
Scott, T. J. 
Scoville, E. 
Scriben & Close, 
Scrohmier, C. 
Seabrook, J. 
Searls, TV. A. 
Sears, F. P. 
Sears, S. 
Seaver, TV. A. 
Seeley, W. G. 
Seibel, Margaret, 
Selmser, E. 
Seymour, C. 
Seymour, C. L. 
Shackleton, B. F. 
Shadrake, F. 
Shaver, N. 
Shaw, S. 
Sheldon, Mrs. 
Shell, J. 
Shelton, TVilliam, 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 



167 



Shepard, A. J. 
Shepard, James D. 
Shepard, John D. 
Shepard, Sidney, 
Sherman, Mrs. 
Sherman, B. F. 
Sherman, J. F. 
Sherman, R. H. 
Sherman, R. J. 
Shoemaker, E. D. 
Shue, S. 
Shumway, H. 
Sinister, F. 
Sibley, J. C. 
Sibley, 0. E. 
Sidway, J. 
Simmons, J. J. 
Sims, Captain, 
Sizer, T. J. 
Shillings, R. 
Sloan, J. 
Sloan, W. 
Slote, H. 
Small, Louis, 
Smith, A. P. 
Smith, B. F. 
Smith, Charles, 
Smith, E. T. 
Smith, G-. "W. 
Smith, George H. 
Smith, J. 
Smith, J. B. 
Smith, J. F. 
Smith, J. R. 
Smith, James, 
Smith, Jane, 
Smith, L. B. 
Smith, Margaret "W. 
Smith, Mary, 
Smith, Samuel, 
Snow, Doctor, 
Sohm, J. 



Somerville, W. 
Souls, H. F. 
Southwick, R. S. 
Spaulding, E. G. 
Spaulding, Mrs. J. 
Speckman, L. 
Sprague, E. C. 
Squier, G-. L. 
Squires, S. 
Stamback, H. G-. 
Stanbridge, Thomas, 
Stannard, W. W. 
Steele, 0. G. 
Stein, Charles, 
Stellwagen, J. 

Stephenson, , 

Sterling, A. 
Sternburgh, M. 
Stettenbenz, A. 
Stevens, A. 
Stevens, H. 
Stevens, H. P. 
Stevens, J. G. 
Stevenson, E. L. 
Stewart, H. 
Stewart, M. 
Stewart, W. H. 
Stillman, H. 
Stocking, S. B. 
Stocking, T. R. 
Stockton, J. M. 
Stone, I. C. 
Stone, K. P. 
Stone, W. P. 
Storrs, W. R. 
Stout, A. 
Stow, E. 
Stow, George, 
Stranskey, W. 
Strasson, H. 
Strathie, Mrs. J. 
Strong, P. H. 



1 68 



THE PRESENT 



Strong, Samuel, 

Strong, Sarah, 

Strozier, H. 

Stubbs, Mrs. 

Studeford, W. V. 

Stukie, J. 

Sully, Robert, 

Sully, T. 

Sutherland, A. 

Sutherland, B. 

Sutton, Mrs. 

Sutton, J. W. 

Sutton, W. L. 

Swaine, J. 

Swartz, J. 

Swartz, John, & others. 

Sweeney, J. 

Sweet, S. 

Sykes, C. W. 

Sykes, S. D. 

Sylvester, M. W. 

Tafft, W. F. 

Taft, M. 
Taintor, C. 
Tanner, A. 
Taunt, E. 
Taylor, D. 
Taylor, John, 
Taylor, John J. 
Taylor, Martin, 
Taylor, Sarah, 
Thayer Brothers, 
Thayer, N. T. 
Thomas, C. F. S. 
Thompson, A. P. 
Thompson, Mrs. B. 
Thompson, E. C. 
Thompson, H. 
Thompson, H. L. 
Thompson, J. 
Thompson, J. G. 
Thompson, J. ~W. 



Thompson, John, 

Thome, J. 

Thornton, T. 

Thorp, N. B. 

Thurston, H. 

Tibbey, Mrs. A. 

Tifft, G. W. 

Tilden, J. H. 

Tilden, T. B. 

Tillinghast, James, 

Timmerman, J. 

Titus, 0. B. 

Tohenden, T. 

Tooley, L. A. 

Torbin, W. 

Torrey, U. 

Townsend, R. 

Townsend, W. H. 

Tows, H. H. 

Tracy, Mrs. A. H. 
Treat, Mrs. Doctor, 
Tregilgus, J. 
Trier, Catherine, 
Trippe, A. F. 
Tripp e, J. 
Truscott, George, 
Tryon, J. C. 
Tryon, M. C. 
Tupper, B. S. 
Turner, C. P. 
Turner, John C. 
Tuttle, D. N. 
Tweedy, "William, 
Tyler, Mrs. 
Tyler, J. K. 
Umpleby, R. 
Underhill, Mrs. C. 
Underhill, C. B. 
Upham, C. L. 
Upson, J. T. 
Urban, Mrs. 
Utley, H. 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 



169 



Valentine, Edward, 

Valentine, F. 

Vallier, Levi, 

Van Allen, H. 

Van Allen, J. D. 

Van Benthuysen, J. H. 

Van Beuren, J. 

Van Card, L. 

Van Deventre, Mrs. 

VanEtten, C. S. 

Vanhuser, E. H. 

Van Orman, P. 

VanSlyke, J. H. 

Van tine, F. 

Van Valkenburgh, H. H. 

Vaugh, J. C. 

Verplanck, A. I. 

Vine, George, 

Vining, G. W. 

Voglit, Rev. M. 

Volger, Mrs. 

Volkman, A. 

Volmer, A. B. 

Voltz, George, 

Vorce, A. 

Vosburgh, A. M. 

Vosburgh, P. M. 

Vosburgh, W. 

Wade, N. 

Wadswortb, J. 

Wage, J. F. 

Wagner. P. A. 

Wait, , 

Walbridge, W. D. 
Waldon, Mrs. J. 
Waldron, C. A. 
Walker, D. 
Walker, G. W. 
Walker, H. C. 
Walker, J. 
Walker, S. 
Walker, W. 
22 



Wallace, H. 
Wallace, W. 

Wallingford, , 

Walls, Miss, 
Walters, H. 
Wanrop, J. 
Ward, H. P. 
Ward, Samuel, 
Wardwell, W. T. 
Warren, IT. 
Warren, H. H. 
Warren, H. J. 
Warren, J. 
Warren, N. D. 
Washburn, G. E. 
Waterman, G. 
Waterman, J. S. 
Waters, L. J. 
Watson, S. V. R. 
Waud, Mrs. 
Waud, J. 
Waud, M. 
Webb, William, 
Weber, J. 
Webster, A. 
Webster, G. C. 
Weed, be Witt C. 
Weed, Hobart, 
Weed, Louise M. 
Weeks, J. L. 
Weich, P. 

Weinhamer, , 

Weinhold, G. 
Weir, Mrs. 
Weis, A. 
Welch, S. M. 
Welch, T. 
Welford, E. 
Weller, P. 
Wells, C. J. 
Wench, P. 
Wentz, J. 



170 



FOREST LAWN CEMETERY. 



Westerman, G. 
Weston, B. 
Weston, H. J. 
Wetowski, 



Wheeler, R. H. 
Wheeler, Stephen, 
Wheeler, W. H. H. 
Whitaker, J. 
Whitaker, T. 
Whitaker, W. D. 
Whitcomb, G. L. 
Whitcomb, J. A. 
White, B. 
White, George C. 
White, H. A. 
White, H. G. 
White, J. & L. 
White, L. 
White, W. C. 
Whittaker, C. H. 
Wilbur, E. S. 
Wilbur, L. D. 
Wilgus, Nathaniel, 
Wilkes, A. W. 
Wilkeson, J. 
Willcox, Mrs. Doctor, 
Williams, A. 
Williams, C. E. 
Williams, E. P. 
Williams, F. 
Williams, G. T. 
Williams, J. 
Williams, J. F. 



Williams, 0. B. 
"Williams, 0. H. P. 

Williams, William, 
Willis, M. H. 
Willson, G.' R. 
Wfflson, J. 
Willson, J. A. 
Willson, Samuel, 
Winchester, E. S. 
Wing, A. 
Wing, C. J. 
Winter, George, 
Winter, J. M. 
Wisner, Helen, 
Wiswell, D. H. 
Wogan, E. 
Woltge, W. 
Wood, A. D. 
Wood, F. P. 
Wood, R. J. 
Woodall, Thomas, 
Woodard, B. 
Woolf, J. 
Wooster, C. F. 
Wooster, H. F. 
Worthington, S. C. 
Wright, S. C. 
Wyckoff, C. C. 

Wynhamer, , 

Yaw, A. P. 
Young, C. E. 
Zimmerman, W. C. 
Zook, D. M. 



